JOHN Jamieson (Letters, Dec 18) correctly describes the lack of political power in Scotland under the “elected dictatorship” of the UK. “There is no point in the Scottish Government taking legal action through the UK court system,” he rightly concludes, but his solution to the problem is “legal advice”.

Well John, it was a lawyer, Nicola Sturgeon, who led us into this boxed canyon in the first place, so I do not believe that good legal advice, in isolation, will show us the way out.

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There is of course a way out of the situation which John accurately describes, but it is not just a simple interpretation of existing law, it is the sovereignty which underpins all laws which needs to be considered, and that is not just for lawyers to consider, in a democracy it is for all of us to participate in.

Sovereignty in Scotland, unlike in England, or as applied by the UK Supreme Court, is in the hands of the Scottish people. As I keep pointing out, this is not an empty slogan, it is a primary factor in our constitution and in our constitutional law.

If we wish to address the concerns about Scotland’s current political weakness which John has highlighted, we must address Scottish sovereignty.

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I make no apology for making this point again in a letter to The National, because until we address it properly we will never be able to address the problems which John accurately describes and which hundreds of thousands of Scots are seeking an answer to.

I will attempt to show John how I believe we can address this, and at the same time answer Campbell Anderson’s earlier question to me. If we want to know how we can apply Scottish sovereignty in an effective way, what we need to do is what we in Scotland have done before – establish a representative voice of the Scottish people in a Scottish constitutional convention. Fortunately our own history gives us a clear example to follow.

We had a referendum in 1979 on Scottish devolution where a majority of 77,400 voters in Scotland voted for a devolved parliament and the UK Government rejected this because it was not a proper majority as defined by Westminster. So what did we do then?

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We continued to campaign for devolution, and by 1989 the Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC) was formed which was based, as I am now proposing, on Scottish sovereignty. When a major report of the SCC was dismissed with disdain by the Thatcher government, the spokesman for the SCC, the late great Canon Kenyon Wright, expressed Scottish sovereignty in simple terms when he famously responded “Well, the UK Government says no, but we are the people and we say yes.”

It was the pressure from the SCC which created the situation where Labour were compelled to bring the 1979 Scotland Bill before the Westminster parliament. This is interpreted in English law by the UK Supreme Court as being a non-political legal activity of the Westminster parliament, but we know differently, we know it was the political pressure from the SCC which created the “Scotland Act”.

So we can see how the sovereign power of the Scottish people created a devolved parliament in Scotland, and the very same power used in a similar way can create an independent parliament for Scotland.

Andy Anderson
Ardrossan

AFTER reading Adam Robertson’s piece (Indy could take ‘10 to 20 years’, former Yes strategist says, Dec 16) all I can say is, if Stephen Noon was the chief strategist for the 2014 referendum ... NO WONDER WE LOST!!!

Barry Stewart
Blantyre