Scottish Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Peter Thomson
The Future of the Union
It is clear to this author that Westminster has lost the plot as far as its North Briton region is concerned and the Scottish Affairs Committee have failed to understand the degree to which their ruminations on Scotland are irrelevant. On the issue of ‘separation’ I will demonstrate why the cause of the growing wish for Scotland to return to its natural state for any nation to be sovereign is actually being driven by the Westminster narrative of a too poor, too wee, too stupid Scotland.
1. In the decade since the resumption of the Scottish Parliament session temporarily suspended in March 1707 opinion polls in the lead up to the Scottish Parliamentary election in 2007 showed time after time that the Scots wished a new relationship between the nation states making up the current UK Union and the preferred new structure would be one of a federation of autonomous nation states. In the run up to May 2007 many Scots identified the Unionist parties as being resistant on this matter, their too poor, too stupid, too wee narrative grated on the psyche and their policies for Scotland remained controlled by their puppet masters at Westminster rather than making any attempt to relate to the growing Scottish sense of self determination.
2. In May 2007 Scottish voters sent a message to the Unionist parties, one of these parties failed to heed as they started on a campaign which had nothing to do with the people of Scotland or their stated wish but everything to do with irrational animosity towards the minority SNP Government.
3. This ‘investigation’ is merely an attempt to shore up the Scotland Act Amendment Bill by conferring legitimacy on sections of a bill that is not yet in law, nor ever likely to be given the requirement of the Sewell Convention which recognises (as did the Supreme Court’s judgement against the insurers), the Scottish Parliament as sovereign, whose Acts are to be respected and the Scottish Parliament has to agree the Scotland Act Amendment Bill in full for it to receive Royal Assent.
4. The reality for the Scottish Affairs Committee is it does not hold the people of Scotland’s sovereignty in care because under Article 19 of the 1707 Treaty of Union the independence of Scots Law and therefore Scottish Constitutional practice is protected for all time. In Scots law and constitutional practice, as pointed out by Lord Cooper in 1953, sovereignty lies with the people of Scotland and not the crown or parliament. A reality first recognised by the writing of the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 into Scots Law and further established by the 1689 Claim of Right which stated that King James the VII and II was thrown off the throne of Scotland because he attempted to assume sovereignty to which he had no claim. The 1689 Claim of Right remains in law and unaltered and stands Messer’s Foulkes and Forsyth’s amendments in contempt of Scots Law and constitutional practice in their attempt to subvert the sovereign people of Scotland’s rights and laws. In Scots Law the people of Scotland exercise their sovereignty through the parliament at Holyrood in the first instance as demonstrated by the Sewell Convention.
5. The Scottish Affairs Committee should also be cognisant with the Treaty of Vienna to which the Westminster Parliament is a signatory on the rights of any nation state to withdraw from any treaty especially where the treaty could be considered to have been entered in to under duress or pressure by one side over the other (such as the acceptance of payments for ensuring the Treaty would be accepted or the failure to allow the sovereign people a vote).
6. The Scottish Affairs Committee also needs to be fully aware of the UN Charter on Human Rights to which Westminster is a signatory which makes clear that the people of a sovereign nation state have the right to undertake a vote to decide whether it remains within a Union, confederation and the like or returns to being an independent nation state.
7. In effect the Scottish Affairs Committee has no legal rights on the matter of whether and when a referendum should take place under Scots or International law or Treaty. The Scottish people are sovereign not parliament—neither at Westminster nor Holyrood.
8. I would suggest before any further embarrassment is heaped on them, the committee stands down, saves the public purse from any further waste of public money and understand they are the problem. Their crassness, denial and vulgar ignorance is what is driving the ‘separation’ and not the sovereign people of Scotland, their democratic wishes or their democratically elected, majority government.
October 2011