I AGREE with much of what Jim Taylor wrote in his letter of August 2. The SNP leadership, most other politicians and many of us in the independence movement have been barking up the wrong tree for too long – and possibly Jim is doing the same thing when he suggests we wait until May 2026 for a de facto referendum.
Jim is absolutely right that the SNP Scottish Government backed a loser by asking a court established to interpret Westminster statutory law to give the Scottish Government powers beyond the very limited ones it has in the Scotland Act.
He is right that this stupid mistake handed the initiative to the UK Government and has left the SNP and to some extent the Yes movement struggling to find a new road to independence.
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But Jim, do we really need to go through this circular argument again? First get support from the people, then negotiate with the UK Government, then get independence. Is this still a valid strategy? I do not believe it is and most Scots do not believe that either.
It is unrealistic to imagine the Scottish Government can “negotiate” independence with any UK Government, so let’s find a better plan, which is not dependent on co-operation with the UK Government.
We do not need to wait until 2026 for that. If we start today we can build support and enthusiasm in the movement and in the Scottish people, which will help us in the 2026 election. We start by accepting and proclaiming that the Scottish people are sovereign – not the Westminster parliament, not the King, not the English UK Supreme Court.
We should insist a) that the Scottish Parliament amend the current Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill to provide that this bill, which deals with constitutional matters, should be subject to a referendum of the Scottish electorate in order to get “sovereign authority” and b) that the Scottish Parliament should put the provisions of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) into Scottish law.
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If they do the first of these things, this will satisfy Scottish constitutional law in that it would confirm sovereign authority on any Scottish bill, whether or not such a bill had King Charles’s royal assent.
The second would confirm in international law the right of the Scottish community to choose the government and economic system the people require, and to hold a referendum on this matter at any time they decide.
It would even allow a Scottish individual to complain directly to the UN if he/she believed that his/her rights were being denied.
The SNP and Alba working together in the Scottish Parliament could and should push this through long before 2026. Of course the Unionists would try to prevent this, but the SNP and Alba would be on strong ground. Under the Scotland Act they have the power to hold a referendum if the bill is addressing issues in Scots law which existed prior to the Union in 1707.
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As for the ICCPR Covenant, the UK Government signed this Treaty in 1976 so they can hardly complain if Scotland puts it in law, just as the Scottish Government put the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scottish law this year.
It seems to me that these are perfectly legitimate moves which the Scottish Government could make, and if the UK Government tried to resist these moves it would be challenging rights which they have acknowledged and treaties they have signed up to.
This, I believe, would give the Scottish Government the initiative and provide us with a battleground more appropriate for our forces to win on.
Andy Anderson
Ardrossan
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