“No state has the right to exist. States exist because a group of people wants the state to exist for their benefit. If the state is no longer beneficial to its people, it can be changed or dissolved." - Matthew Gindin
On the 13th April the Scottish government will hold a celebration of twenty five years of the Scottish parliament’s existence. Doubtless detractors will be quietly sidelined while we get on with Tartan Week. Another anniversary looms in September. I doubt if there will be any street parties to celebrate although there will, no doubt, be a few mass gatherings. In the ten years since the referendum, what have we learned? Well, nothing apparently.
In the run-up to the referendum we saw bruising and uninformative exchanges between political parties. What we did not see was real information about what an independent Scotland could or should look like. Except just once. A debate was aired on BBC2 before a carefully selected studio audience, the protagonists were knowledgeable and the debate respectful and informative. No politicians were involved and the audience’s opinion, by the end of the debate, had moved very substantially in favour of independence. This debate was aired without prior notice and at the prime time slot of 11.25 pm. I doubt if too many people watched it but it did show what could happen if people actually talked about what they wanted.
In the time since then, opportunities may have arisen for the SNP to effectively take independence. The key one being in 2016 with Brexit having been declared and Article 50 invoked, the SNP had 56 MPs in parliament and an arguable 67% support for withdrawal. But the problem remained, as it does today. No one asked the Scottish people what they wanted their country to be. The resulting division in the electorate gave cause for considerable political uncertainty. The issue of true self-determination is one that political parties struggle with, understandably perhaps, given that they may well get answers that they don’t want to hear. It also creates a situation where the campaign in general always puts the cart before the horse. They fly the flag for independence while the majority really don’t know what will come after. This underlines a mindset in which the existence of the state itself is the only important issue.
Again, from Matthew Gindin:
"States do not have rights. People have rights, and these rights generally exist to protect them from states. When they don’t exist to protect them from states, they exist to protect them from other people.”
The Scots are a nation. That much is irrefutable. What we are really arguing about is whether, in the quest for self-determination, we need to adopt the mantle of a nation state. Given that any meaningful form of self-determination makes it clear that the answer is yes, then what we should be giving careful consideration to is the means by which we arrive at that conclusion with the enthusiastic support of the great majority of the Scottish people, and to that end means, one way or another, a national convention.
Of course the question of how a convention is called and what representation it has are key issues but perhaps the main problem lies with our political parties. Over the last four years or more, I have had several discussions with political representatives virtually all of which foundered on the idea of what constitutes a national convention. It seems that our politicians are in favour just as long as the convention consists of political representatives in isolation and in a closed room. This hardly meets the criterion of self-determination nor is it likely to enthuse those members of the fifty percent who are not yet supportive of independence.
Currently plans are being made, and are in a fairly advanced stage, for a very different convention.
The National Convention is designed to involve not just politicians but also civic society and delegates representative of the people themselves. Over a series of sessions lasting at least two years every aspect of Scottish society will be examined, expert analysis sought and resolutions placed before the people to vote on.
Given that there is very little enthusiasm within the political establishment both here and in Westminster for effective devolution of government, Scotland Decides was formed as a platform for self-determination. At its heart is a virtual electorate using a system which has proven validity and has been used in six locations around the world including one general election. International authenticity has been established and, while we expect that Westminster would raise objections to any outcome, the platform owes no obligation to the UK constitutional or political system. Its value to Scotland lies in our ability to call a national vote at any time of our choosing without reference to Westminster or, for that matter, to Holyrood, to choose the wording of the question to be asked and to provide back-up information enabling voters to make an informed choice.
In 1963 German chancellor Ludwig Erhard, responding to accusations about his party’s “socialist” policies, referred to the country’s “national ideology” implying boundaries that any political organisation crossed at their peril. Although Erhard was later ousted in a row over taxation, his concept of social democracy became ingrained in Germany’s system and served the country well for decades to come. What Scotland needs today is a national ideology formed at grassroots level to serve as a template for all political parties to respect. The people need to get together and tell our politicians what we want as a nation. They might even be grateful to us for doing so.
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