Oor Leigh Cairngorm

The text of letter by Sandy Rose to The National in response to its podcast involving Alf Baird and Robin McAlpine. "We must scrutinise every route to win our independence "I listened to your podcast debate, "What's the best route to independence?" featuring Alf Baird and Robin McAlpine and chaired by Laura Webster. "The discussion prompted me to consider what independence would deliver in practice, and why the Union's historical and constitutional foundations deserve international scrutiny. "Most of us have bought something that promised more than it delivered. "The words were carefully chosen, but what we received was not what we were led to expect. "We should bring the same scrutiny to independence, and to the Union itself. "Baird, drawing on Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon, shows that domination shapes more than government. "It influences how a people understands its history, values its culture and judges its own ability to govern. "Some Scots find this uncomfortable because colonialism is something they believe happens to other people. "Discomfort does not settle the question. The test is where power lies and how it constrains our choices. "Fanon also warned that replacing those at the top does not put power in ordinary people's hands. "A new flag alone does not end economic dependence. History offers sobering examples. "Haiti won its freedom, then was forced to pay France an indemnity for it, a debt not cleared until 1947. "Eight West African states, independent since the 1960s, were still required to lodge half their foreign reserves with the French treasury until a reform in 2019, and France continues to guarantee their currency. Flags changed. Control of the money did not. "Even if Westminster allowed another referendum and Scotland voted Yes, the terms of departure would still be negotiated: debt, defence, currency, public assets. "We cannot assume the independence people imagine would match the settlement eventually offered. "The same scrutiny must reach back to 1707. Scotland did not enter the Union without a consititution. "It had laws, institutions and limits on royal authority, including those set out in the Claim of Right. "The Union was a treaty between two sovereign kingdoms, and its lawfulness and the keeping of its terms are matters of record and must be examined. Liberation Scotland's research identifies where those terms were broken. "Pointing to modern UK legislation does not answer that. Section 37 of the Scotland Act 1998 states that the Acts of Union "have effect subject to this Act" "But the parliament that passed it was itself created by the Union. By what authority may it override the conditions of its own creation? "Westminster's authority today and the justification for claiming it in the first place are different questions, and neither has ever been properly answered. "That is why Scotland's case needs international hearing. The institution whose authority is in question cannot be the only forum in which the challenge is heard. "An international approach must also set out its procedures, obstacles and intended outcome, or it becomes one more promise whose small print we discover afterwards. "Scotland's people must gain the power to determine their future and to hold those who govern them to account. "Every route to independence should be judged against that standard." Sandy Rose