Scottish Independence: Has Westminster Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew?

Although I’m not Scottish and I don’t live in Scotland I found myself captivated by the recent referendum campaign, and deeply disappointed by the failure of a majority of Scottish people to reach for the stars when the opportunity was within their grasp.

As a free-thinking activist with a lifetime of experience of fighting against the system under one guise or another I was unsurprised by the manipulation, the dishonesty and the sheer nastiness of the Westminster campaign for a No vote. Not only was no stone left unturned by the three UK establishment political parties and their controlled media, but no stone was not crawled from under as Team Westminster set about its business of trying to frighten, browbeat, cajole and bully the Scottish people out of claiming what was rightfully theirs. The elderly in particular were identified as being vulnerable to warnings that they would be left with no money, no oil, no NHS, no pensions, no hope and no future without the protective arm of the Union wrapped tightly around them.

To begin with, Team Westminster persisted with the pretense that it was actually three teams, each individually fighting the good fight for their own selfless, altruistic reasons. The truth was, of course, that the Tories were a party beholden to a unionist fanbase whilst Labour and the Liberal Democrats stood to lose politically from the loss of their Scottish parliamentary seats. Party before people as always.

Then, shortly before the big day, when a rogue opinion poll bucked the trend by placing the Yes campaign ahead, the three stooges turned up all at once in the obvious belief that their combined celebrity would impress the Scottish people where all the fallacious arguments and threats about currency and EU membership apparently hadn’t. A joint promise of sorts was made, with Scottish people being taken to the Hadrianic equivalent of Mount Hermon and told that all this could be theirs if only they would renounce the credo that is independence.

FEAR TRIUMPHS OVER HOPE

Sadly, on the day fear triumphed over hope. Around 55% (2 million) of the Scottish electorate voted against their own independence, with 45% (over 1.6 million) in favour. This, so the beaming BBC pundits told us, was a death blow to the romantics and the dreamers who had campaigned for self-determination.

What followed next was quite extraordinary. Membership of the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP), which had been a little over 25,000 on the day of the referendum, rose to 57,000 within a week of the poll. The SNP now has three members in Scotland for every two the Liberal Democrats have in the whole of the UK.

Radical socialists, greens and other pro-independence groupings have urged fellow Scots to support the SNP at the 2015 general election and in the Holyrood ballot a year hence, to demonstrate for once and for all a decisive mandate in favour of independence.

Representations have been made to the appropriate authorities by Yes campaigners who believe there to have been serious malpractice in the conduct of the counting process on September 18th. And social media groups, forums and online chat rooms have veritably exploded with activity, with thousands of otherwise very ordinary and typical Scots (and even a few non-Scots) beginning to discuss the mechanics and logistics of revolution.

As any fool could have predicted, the promises made to Scottish voters by the Unholy Trinity very quickly transpired to be so much hot air, as the leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties immediately embarked upon an unseemly squabble about what it really was that they had (literally) signed up to. For the Tories, concessions to the Scots had to be accompanied by similar powers granted to the English so that Scottish MPs would no longer be able to vote on English-only issues, just as English MPs are not currently allowed to vote on Scottish-only matters. The so-called West Lothian question.

PLOY

Typically this was a ploy. In the event of a future Labour or Labour-led government being elected throughout the UK, an English-only parliament with a Conservative majority could basically ignore it on most issues and treat it with indifference. Labour protested, not unreasonably, that there had been no mention of this in the agreement they had hastily signed up to on the eve of the poll.

Labour strategists oppose the question of an English parliament being made into a condition of pledges to the Scottish people being honoured. But then they would, wouldn’t they?

Meanwhile Scotland sits and patiently waits. Assuming the result is not declared null and void, Scotland remains a part of the UK for now but with seething, festering resentment brought forth by righteous anger. The SNP, transformed overnight from local political party to a potential liberating army, bides its time. And Labour, who treacherously led the No campaign in the belief that the continuance of the Union would increase its chances of forming the next Westminster government with the help of Scottish seats, now faces the very real possibility that come next May it might not actually have any.

Ich Bin Ein Schotte

The late President John F. Kennedy once famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" as he addressed thousands of Germans by the Wall in West Berlin.

When he meant, of course, was that their struggle for freedom was his struggle too, that their aspirations were his aspirations. Is was an assertion of their common humanity and of the belief they shared in freedom and democracy.

Some of those in the crowd actually found his declaration slightly amusing. It was not that they didn't share his passion for freedom. More the fact that what he had actually said to the assembled throng, literally translated, had been "I am a jelly doughnut".

A "Berliner", you see, was and is actually a term given to a particular German pastry with a jelly filling. What he should have said, apparently, was "Ich bin Berliner", which is how a German-speaker who was actually from Berlin would have put it.

I hope that by proudly reminding the world of my distant Scottish ancestry, albeit only recently discovered, I have not inadvertently revealed myself to be some Caledonian delicacy. I mention it only because of the fierce sense of pride I have in the fact that, in contrast to the inane to-ing and fro-ing between equally discredited political options provided to the English people by the English establishment, the Scots would appear finally to have decided that enough is enough and have given the Scottish National Party (SNP) a clear overall majority in the Scottish Parliament and thereby a platform from which to launch a serious bid for Scottish independence.

Why should I, a resident of English Isleworth, be so enthusiastic about Scottish independence? I'm not, really, except for one thing. As with the AV debate (which it would appear has been lost, for the time being at least), an opportunity has been provided to wake people from their deep slumber, rooted in the belief that nothing will change because nothing can change and that, therefore, nothing should change. It is a deadly and debilitating mentality that allows the establishment to walk all over its subjects, and to lie to them and to deceive them with impunity without so much as a thank you for their tame and frankly embarrassing acquiescence.

The SNP now can, indeed will be expected to, press for the complete independence of Scotland from an English-dominated United Kingdom. English people have nothing to fear from this, and nothing to be defensive about. We should wish our Scottish cousins well, and help them to realise their aspirations in a spirit of goodwill and kind neighbourliness.

In the meantime, for the UK, nothing will quite be the same. Which is a good thing, because the "same" means the same lies, the same deceit, the same spin and the same coming together of squalid vested interests, even where those interests may on the surface of it appear to be antagonistic, just as we witnessed from the "No" campaign during the referendum.

So fundamentally corrupt and wicked is our present establishment that almost anything that shakes it up, knocks it down and generally gives it a good kicking has to be a good thing.

It had never occurred to me that English political life might have been done such a service by the Scottish National Party but politics can be a funny thing, and full of surprises.