Respect Scottish Sovereignty
It is widely acknowledged that the Scottish People are sovereign, which means that they are the highest legal and constitutional authority in Scotland, so why is it that we seem to be bogged down with “legal” red tape which prevents the Scottish people from using that authority.
The answer to that is simple, although it is hidden in a man-made smoke screen designed to mislead and confuse the Scottish people, and most importantly to stop them from having a voice.
One example of that is the recently invented so-called UK Supreme Court. This is not as described a UK court, because there is no such thing as UK law, it is an English Court (because it takes the English definition of sovereignty) has ruled that the Scottish Government can’t organise a referendum of the Scottish people on the subject of independence.
This is widely interpreted as a claim that the UKSC is the sovereign law in Scotland and has ruled that the Scottish people have no right to hold such a referendum. But that is not the case, it is a distortion. The UKSC would not claim to have sovereign authority in Scotland or to be able to prevent the Scottish people from holding a referendum on independence because that is not the case. They have ruled that the Scottish Parliament does not have this power under the Scotland Act.
Now, many people in Scotland, including some of our elected representatives seem to be confused by this legal chicanery, but it is not difficult to cut through particularly if you keep your eye on the essentials.
- The Scottish People are sovereign so they are the highest constitutional and legal authority in Scotland.
- The Scottish People have Human Rights under UN Covenants which ensure that they can determine the Government and economic structure they want, and can hold a referendum on civil and political matters any time they like and as often as they like, among other rights
- Is the UK Government opposed to these UN rights? No, they voted for them at the UN and ratified them when they were published by the UN in 1976,
- Can these Human Rights Covenants be applied today in Scotland? Well, some can, like the Rights of the Child, which have been consolidated into Scots law (last year), but others have not been yet been consolidated into Scots law.
- Can the other UN Covenants be consolidated into Scots law now? Yes they can, that is what the petition number PE2135 on UN ICCPR is calling on the Scottish Parliament to do
- Can the UK Establishment stop the Scottish Parliament from consolidation these UK Human Rights into Scots Law? No they can’t. The Scottish Human Rights Commission have been urging the Scottish Government to do this and their lawyers, like us, see that such a move is possible, and not subject to “reserve powers” in the Scotland Act.
- If the UN ICCPR were consolidated into Scots law could the Scottish Parliament then organise a referendum on political issues such as independence? Yes, if the Scottish people called for such a referendum in sufficient numbers about 2% of the electorate.
The decision by the RSS to set up this petition is to give the Scottish people the right to have a say on this issue. Unfortunately many people in Scotland will not be aware of this Petition and therefore will not participate, so it is vital that we get this knowledge to as many people as possible so that they can take part in this petition
If you go to the Scottish Parliament website, then to petitions, then to petition number PE2135 you will be able to see the petition in full and to vote on it.
See PE2135: Implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in Scottish legislation HERE.
Find out more about the Respect Scottish Sovereignty group HERE.
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The link to sign the petition is here: https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2135
Well said.
Charlie3 is the sovereign and is theoretically the highest authority in the UK, Canada, and Australia. We are his subjects. I don’t think many people care though, but they certainly care even less about UN covenants.
However, if the author wishes to raise more awareness about UN covenants I suggest he doesn’t start with a fallacy that he probably got on the internet.
No idea who the author is do you idiot.
Agree
So, I’ve mentioned the The United Kingdom constitution – a mapping exercise (published December 2024):
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9384/
which contains relevant sections on courts, laws, devolution, and devotes section 2.3 to “Leaving the Union(s)”. Now, I thank the report’s author for bringing this view-of-views of the British imperial quasi-constitution towards the fresh air, but I have to regard most of it as woolly at best, incoherent garbage in other places. One might think its confusion was deliberately designed to avoid anyone being held accountable for the manifold crimes of empire. There is such a fug of stale farts hanging around these learned opinions that on reading, one might imagine oneself in some place like the Garrick Club, where such learned authorities holed up (until recently, one gathers).
So, calls to lean on some centuries-old conception of Scottish popular sovereignty hailing from a time of grotesque social inequality, religious fundamentalism and dominionism, intolerance and racism, misogyny and patriarchy, has a similar appeal, I’m afraid.
Now, under the expected conditions of polycrisis, normal political operation is likely to be suspended across jurisdictions, making predictions of what any executive power can and cannot do rather uncertain. By unilaterally imposing a state of emergency (apparently Charles Windsor can do this from the Privy Council, bypassing Parliaments) and possibly escalating control via martial law (looters, y’know), all restrictions on executive power will fade away. International treaty obligations will be abrogated. In which case, good luck with your UN manoeuvres.
But my real gripe with this assertion of popular sovereignty is its hideous propertarian humanism. When the living planet sickens at our touch, you exult in dominion instead of bringing political remedy. Instead, invert the pyramid. Recognize Earth systems, then the biosphere, then biomes and ecosystems, communities and populations, other species and only at the End, ourselves. Find the appropriate role for humans, as foresightful medics to our diseased planet, to reverse the harms we have collectively inflicted. Burn this hubristic notion of popular sovereignty, not the planet, and recognise nonhumans (currently living, future generations, respect for past) as the true inheritors of our planet, which lives we humans must serve.
#biocracynow
Your last paragraph is reminiscent of museum curator Vincent Price on Alice Cooper’s Welcome to my Nightmare – “If I may put forward a slice of personal philosophy, I feel that man has ruled this world as a stumbling, demonic child king long enough! And as his empire crumbles, my precious Black Widow shall rise as his most fitting successor.” Have you heard this?
@Derek Thomson, I have not. Vincent Price is not one of my inspirations, consciously at least, but then perhaps I haven’t entirely forgotten:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death_(1964_film)
I do believe that humans can play a positive, healthy role in Earth’s future, but perhaps other species would do a better job. It would be difficult to do worse than nuclear war, for example.
This feels like a disavowal of our responsibility as a species, and plays into the notion that the world would really be better without humans. The narrative suggests that the problem is humans when the problem is capitalism.
@Editor, capitalism is primary among the humanisms that imperil, degrade and poison our world, but far from the only one. And various theisms look forward to a final apocalyptic battle and view the material world as an entirely expendable stepping-stone to the eternal afterlife.
You provided a bullet-point list which I can agree with point-by-point:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/01/09/independence-and-power/
but it falls far short of a model. Even an Asimovian Laws of Robotics ordering would have been an improvement. And indeed, you could have just said you wanted a healthy society and living planet, and most of your demands would have been implied anyway.
So why do we keep returning to human Will, when planetary Health is the obvious necessity and political priority? And why do we see so much insistence that human population levels and concentrations are not problematic for either the living planet or humans themselves?
I just gave a brief summary of what human responsibilities should be, on the basis of core ethics from our shared biology. Politics is how we arrange to live in groups large enough to contain strangers. And while most of our planet-sharers are strangers to us, that is no rational reason to exclude non-humans from our political systems. No other species, AFAIK, has the capacity to organise politically on a planetary scale (not even supercolony ants), so the role of humans is to do so on behalf of the others. Health isn’t a zero-sum game. Become the superorganism we all need.
This argument seems hopelessly legalistic to me. Where are power relations in all this? Good luck with it, but let’s not give up on the class struggle and social movements quite yet…
At time of typing 1,620 signatures. A disappointing response.
I have recently signed the ICCPR petition and we will be discussing it at our SNP branch meeting tomorrow. I have been following the ‘National’ correspondence on the subject, but when I started to look at the Covenant itself a doubt began to rise. The ICCPR is not part of English domestic law but it is legally binding on the whole UK and the UK is the ‘State’ in terms of the Covenant. This presumably means that Scotland as a ‘People’ already has the right to self-determination within the UK. If Scotland seeks to incorporate this Covenant into Scots law could this not be seen as confirming Scotland as a devolved ‘nation’ within the UK? Bob Millar