IV

The differences between Irish and Scottish attitudes to the Union are evident in many ways, but it is a source of constant disappointment to the present writer that Scottish politics has rejected any and every means available to an anticolonial movement to succeed in its aims. Why not take the Irish case as a model to follow? There is exactly one example of (most of) a State having left the Forever United Completely Kingdom, and the Scots would do well to pay close attention, especially when it comes to avoiding Partition and any lingering Border Question. 

The narrow legalistic route pursued by the Bourgeois Nationalists of the SNP already presupposes that Imperial Law has a bearing on the Scottish Nation. Contrast that with the Irish juries that refused to convict people—even if guilty—before and during the Revolutionary Perio, refusing to recognise the jurisdiction of the Colonial Courts. So hampered is the SNP by its approach that they will not even make the case for a referendum that is not prescribed by law, but that is also not proscribed by law, so upset is it at the idea of unionists decrying an illegal referendum. 

Then again this is a party whose long-time leader said that she has come to regret that the party uses the word national in its name. The party’s name does not even say nationalist, which has a better claim to being an off-putting term, it merely says national—as in, of the nation—perfectly apposite for a party that looks to turn the Scottish Nation into a Nation State. There are no non-nationalists after all: those fake Scots who are opposed to a Scottish Nation merely favour the English one instead of their own. But this is a party as modish in its day-to-day concerns as it is feeble in representing its apparent great ambition. 

Why does the Scottish Government keep losing court cases? the English Broadcasting Corporation asks in a headline. Because they are working within the framework of English law, a body of law that is constantly expanded upon by English politicians specifically to prevent the little Scottish Government from sneaking through any gaps. This is what the same EBC article refers to as muscular unionism, for which read imperialism. The English Supreme Court held that the Scottish Government could not pursue a democratic mandate for independence because in the list of cute things that the Scottish Government has been allowed responsibility for, the right to challenge its status as a colony does not feature. The power to decide on the status of Scotland is a reserved matter, that is, it is within the power of the English Government alone. This is a smudgier affair than the similar Spanish case, because there is no written English Constitution. England, having avoided the perils of a written constitution—since if it had one then people would know what it says—its judges can appeal only to the vaguest sense of what seems like it might be the case. England being an imperialist state in its own neighbourhood, as well as throughout the world, it seems right that a referendum on Celtic independence would be illegal, even if there is no such law. 

Furthermore, the English judges detained themselves for a while on the question of having an advisory referendum, that is one that has no legal standing, and therefore should not be assumed to be illegal. Such a referendum

[…] would undoubtedly be an important political event, even if its outcome had no immediate legal consequences, and even if the United Kingdom Government had not given any political commitment to act upon it. A clear outcome, whichever way the question was answered, would possess the authority, in a constitution and political culture founded upon democracy, of a democratic expression of the view of the Scottish electorate. The clear expression of its wish either to remain within the United Kingdom or to pursue secession would strengthen or weaken the democratic legitimacy of the Union, depending on which view prevailed, and support or undermine the democratic credentials of the independence movement.

One gets the feeling that it is not the risk of undermining the democratic credentials of the independence movement that the judges are concerned about. Sometimes the colonial authorities allow themselves these kinds of musings amongst themselves. Macdara is reminded of the prestigious judge who upheld the convictions of wrongfully jailed Irish people on the basis of the appalling vista of such a gross miscarriage of justice being made public: better to stick to the official line. Here we have representatives of English officialdom saying that asking the people whay they want might give rise to a result that the English Government does not want…better not to ask the question at all. Let us keep Democracy safe from the People!

V

To paraphrase Audre Lorde, the master’s law will never dismantle the master’s state: it cannot be the case that the oppressive state has the right to decide on a nation’s right to vote.

We need more of the spirit of Antigone: there are Laws greater than the conqueror’s law; imperatives greater than imperial concerns. These must be observed.

If your referendum is illegal, so much the better to demonstrate the idiocy of someone else’s laws. Hold it anyway.

If there is no express provision for your referencum in law, then it is not illegal (inasmuch as this website, for example, is not mandated by law but is clearly not illegal). Hold it anyway.

While the present writer wishes to see a Communistic world, one in which all peoples unite to ensure the freedom of all, one must ask oneself which is more likely: that nation-states acting in concert can bring about such a world, or that late feudal agglomerates, internally divided and unhappy, polities by definition held together by force, will act in concert? The former might be a dream but the latter is a phantasy, a dangerous phantasy, and one already disproven. So this internationalist calls for freedom for the nationalities before we decide how we will come together to do what must be done thereafter.