When I Was a Child

“Why the teaching of Scottish culture and history helped inform my intention to vote for an independent Scotland.” By Stewart Bremner.

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  1. Wullie says:

    Excellent stuff.

  2. Charles Patrick O'Brien says:

    Why was there not much Scottish history taught at school? was it as I suspect to keep us a tame colony.

  3. rickdebrux says:

    That is just brilliant.
    Thank you.

  4. Piobaire says:

    And the next level is the “Scottish” rendering of the founding history, language and culture of Scotland; that of Gaelic Scotland, the one found in the Declaration of Arbroath. Let’s start by never using the expression teuchter again and by taking to task those who do. Which other country in Europe would regard its living, founding culture as something to be ridiculed, reviled and destroyed? We need to travel a long way to make up for those lost centuries.

  5. habibbarri says:

    Stewart, this is fantastic! Please don’t think me churlish when I say that Scots are not subjects. We are the Sovereign of Scotland, not the Queen, not the Westminster Parliament. not the Queen in Parliament. The Queen and both Parliaments are subjects of the Sovereign Scottish People regarding Scottish affairs. The only way Westminster will admit that this is the constitutional reality of Scotland, and of th e UK, is if we cease to be part of the UK, claim our right as a Sovereign People, Scots, who together as one People are Sovereign, whether our origin be in Scotland, Ireland, England, Eastern Europe, South Asia or anywhere Else.

  6. @Piobaire – actually, I was speaking about the Scots language, which has even less representation than the small amount Gaelic has.

    @habibarri – I was under the impression that while the queen is the head of state, we are subjects. We live in a monarchy, not a democracy, which is why I deliberately chose the word ‘subject’ not ‘citizen’. Would that it were not so.

  7. habibbarri says:

    Stewart, I appreciate your response. There’s an anomaly here concerning Sovereignty in Scotland, England, and the UK. In Scots constitutional law, while the Queen is head of state, she is an elected head of state. This principle goes back to the Declaration of Arbroath, and particularly to the writings of George Buchanan. I’m too busy to look it up right now, but Buchanan wrote that though we have a hereditary monarchy, the first king was chosen by the people, so his successors also are in the line of being chosen by the people. That’s why we felt free to depose Mary Stewart, and James VII. The English Parliamentbelieved that they could not depose him. So they declared that James had abdicated by fleeing the country. The Scottish Parliament simply deposed him.

    So the People of Scotland are not, in principle, subjects. The Queen and Westminster regard us as subjects, in violation of the Treaty and Act of Union. That’s why I resist Scots being called subjects. We are the Sovereign in Scotland, The framers of the Treaty and Act did not include in them any way of enforcing this principle. Thus we have the first Queen Elizabeth on the UK, under the influence of that, half American, English chauvinist, Winston Churchill, choosing the title of QEII, a title that refers only to England. Thus also we have the violation of the Treaty and Act, which are the basic written documents of the Constitution of the UK, and the violation of the Constitution of Scotland and the UK, by the Westminster Government creating the Supreme Court of the UK.

    I’m not being churlish. I feel passionate about my country, and about the Sovereignty of the Scottish people in our own land. Since that Constitutional Sovereignty is denied by Westminster and its minions, I think we need to keep asserting it until we vote YES, and actually achieve it in practise.

  8. Christine Cave says:

    The declaration of arbroath was a wish list from a bunch of rich men, nothing more, nothing less. It was totally ignored. I could write one with the same impact. Pathetic argument.

  9. all so true. Physical and Metaphysical clearances. This chimed with me strongly.

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