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The Scotland-UN Committee
Introduction and References
Prologue – the Prehistory
The Parliament of the Kingdom of Scots is an institution
of venerable antiquity. Mentioned in written records as far back as the
year 1174 under King William I “The Lion” (“Dunc tint li reis Willame
sun plenier parlament”), it asserted its power on innumerable
occasions against foreign aggression as against attempts by the Crown to
exercise absolute authority. This ranged from running the country for
years while the King was in English captivity, meanwhile upholding the
alliance with France, to taking the initiative during the constitutional
wars of the 17th century. It even set up a special committee “to wage
war against the King” to assert the supremacy of the Community of the
Realm of Scotland against the royal claim of divine right to rule.
Unfortunately, it was just such a claim to which Scotland
was subjected by the very shortsighted Union with England, where the
idea of a royal divine right still prevailed, albeit now transferred to
the English Parliament that went into abeyance on 1 May 1707. The
further transfer of that alleged absolute sovereignty to the new United
Kingdom Parliament had no basis in law or logic, nor did the Scottish
Parliament have the authority to transfer any such absolute power to its
successor. It was based simply on a totally erroneous assumption south
of the Border that the brand-new joint legislature of the brand-new
United Kingdom was the English Parliament continuing.
The unpopularity of the Union within Scotland, and the
autocratic manner in which the English majority behaved towards
Scotland, within the next half century provoked four armed uprisings
that could be suppressed only with military force, accompanied by
barbaric atrocities by government troops. The stone outcrop on which
the Jacobite standard was raised at Glenfinnan in 1745 still bears the
inscription declaring the end of the Union with England to be one of the
main objectives of the rising.
The attempts to restore the Scottish Government and
Parliament, generally only for the running of Scottish affairs within
the Union, continued at intervals with increasing intensity over the
following two centuries, as the power and influence of the British world
empire rose to its peak around 1880 and then went into an accelerating
decline, hastened by two world wars. 34 measures in the Westminster
Parliament for the recall of the Scottish legislature were killed by
procedural chicanery, or simply voted down “democratically” by the huge
English majority in an atmosphere of jeers and contempt for Scotland and
all things Scottish. That era came to an abrupt end after the Thatcher
regime in 1979 arrogantly “repealed” a home rule Act after it had been
adopted by the constitutionally supreme Scottish people in a referendum
This time the gloves came off
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had gone a step too far
by purporting to override a perfectly legitimate majority decision by
the Scottish people in the 1979 referendum. The details of that orgy of
manipulation and corruption, recorded while the events were still fresh,
can be read here in the 1979 documentation of the event entitled
The
Government of Scotland in the Light of the Scotland Act.
A more concise survey and statement of the sovereignty of
the Scottish people is contained in a critique of the referendum
experience:
After the ’79 – book review. Written at the invitation of the
editors of the Edinburgh review Cencrastus, and published in its issue
no. 11 at New Year 1983, it advocated unilateral action by the Scots to
implement their own democratic decision.
The Scottish reaction to Thatcher’s arrogant coup
d’état in defiance of the most basic constitutional principles was
at first stunned, and then a wave of boiling anger spread across the
country. The atmosphere of the time can be sensed in John McGill’s
tribute to his late Scotland-UN founder colleague
Willie McRae, who was shot dead under still unexplained
circumstances on a lonely highland road on 6 April 1985.
It was against this background that a group of Scots
resolved to take the case of self-determination for Scotland to the
United Nations and the international community generally.
The
Scotland-UN Committee – the Story in Brief provides a summary of
its activities right through to the historic conclusion of its work and
the restoration of the Scottish Parliament and Government. A more
concise version can be read in
Devolution and the Labour Myth, which also provides some
additional details. A full account must await the release of the
records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office.
The campaign expands at home and abroad
Scotland-UN initiated and legitimised its activities by
drawing up a petition, finally signed by more than 300,000 Scots,
requesting it to take the issue of self-government to the United Nations
and the international authorities generally. The petition sheets were
lodged with UN HQ New York along with a document putting the Scottish
case. The following year a detailed 99-page dossier with the title
Scotland’s Claim of Right to Self-Determination, compiled by a
Scotland-UN expert committee, was sent to the UN Commission on Human
Rights in Geneva as well as being circulated to other international
institutions and every national government in the world individually.
An unanswered
Petition to the Queen cleared the way for action at
international level.
These activities were carried on within the overall
framework of the campaign for the restoration of democratic government
in Scotland. Members of the Scotland-UN group were also very active in
the Campaign for a Scottish Parliament (CSP) and other home-rule
organisations, in addition to Scotland-UN’s own activities at home and
abroad. The proposal to hold a Scottish Constitutional Convention, in
premises already booked at Edinburgh University, was one of a number of
Scotland-UN initiatives in 1979. A Blue Paper was circulated to all
Scottish local and regional authorities, but was not proceeded with at
the time due to an inadequate response.
Four years later, however, the idea had spread, and so
the editors of Radical Scotland magazine invited Scotland-UN to expand
on the subject. James Wilkie’s article entitled
A Scottish Constitutional Convention: the door to the future,
printed in the magazine’s Dec 1983/Jan 1984 issue, explained Scotland-UN’s
ideas. It not only dealt with the constitutional issues involved, and
the justification for unilateral Scottish action in an international
context, but also laid out the structures and procedures that were later
followed by the Convention in the course of its work.
While seeking concrete action at international level,
Scotland-UN published some of the constitutional know-how garnered
through contact with leading foreign specialists in a series of papers
written for wider distribution to a more general and less intellectual
readership. One typical example is
Scotland’s Parliament – the Right of Recall by the People, which
restated the justification for unilateral action by the Scots by simply
setting up their own Parliament without reference to anyone else.
The international campaign was stepped up on every
available occasion, mostly just with the purpose of making Scotland’s
case known in the most important circles worldwide, especially in the
United States, where a number of S-UN members and supporters were active
at fairly high level:
Appeal to the US Congress to support Scotland’s cause. Wherever
possible, however, diplomatic action was undertaken where there was a
possibility of an immediate effect on the Scottish situation.
The earliest such action, in 1980, was a direct
confrontation with the Thatcher regime in London, which in its search
for “a final solution of the Scottish question” had attempted to obtain
international approval of its assertion that there was no demand for
regional government (devolution) within the UK. Scotland-UN totally
destroyed that assertion with a powerful diplomatic campaign within the
Council of Europe, backed up by a pointedly worded document that the CoE
Secretary General circulated to every member government:
Memorandum to the Council of Europe 1980
One rather
audacious move, from which only long-term effects were anticipated, but
in the short term brought Scottish affairs once again into full public
view before the world authority, is described in The
Stone of Destiny at the United Nations. The short- and
medium-term success of this enterprise took the Committee’s breath away
and strengthened its determination to exploit every similar opportunity
that availed itself on the international scene. This tactic had already
paid off, for example when three Scotland-UN representatives were
enabled to put Scotland’s case at a week-long conference by special
invitation at United Nations HQ Geneva.
Meantime the targeting of the increasing number of
international institutions gathered pace. In Europe the circumstances
of the late Cold War period were hardly propitious but improving. One
dramatic development was the emergence of a new force on the
international scene in the shape of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which later became the OSCE and is now
Europe’s largest political institution. The intensive research that
this activity involved enabled Scotland-UN to issue definitive
statements of Scotland’s rights like
Self-Determination – what does International Law say? And to
back it up with an equally authoritative statement of how Scotland
qualifies for the right:
Scotland’s Status as a Nation.
By this time Scotland-UN was being run on the lines of
professional international diplomacy, which demanded careful situation
assessments before undertaking any diplomatic project. One example is
the 1986
Assessment of the International Situation, intended for S-UN
internal use only, but still providing a fascinating historical
perspective of a world that has now disappeared.
Scotland-UN relentlessly targeted the CSCE/OSCE, along
with other international institutions, with progress reports on the
government of Scotland and the many sins committed by the Thatcher
regime there. The “saturation bombing” of individual member states
doubtless contributed to the CSCE’s emphatic support for the principle
of self-determination of peoples at its Third Follow-up-Conference in
Vienna in 1986/89. The relevant CSCE statement remains a milestone to
this day:
"[The participating states] confirm that, by virtue of
the principle of equal rights and self determination of peoples, and in
conformity with the relevant provisions of the [Helsinki] Final Act, all
peoples always have the right, in full freedom, to determine, when and
as they wish, their internal and external political status, without
external interference, and to pursue as they wish their political,
economic and cultural development. (Questions Relating to Security in
Europe, No. 4)"
Then came the final breakthrough
However, as Scotland-UN reported in its
Submission on Scotland's Right to Self-Determination to the
subsequent CSCE meetings in Paris (1989) and Moscow (1991), there was
every indication that London had not the slightest intention of falling
into line with the international constitutional norms. It was clear
that, if we were going to make any real progress, we would have to go to
the negotiating table with a weapon in our hands.
The opportunity to do just that arrived as the Communist
system in Eastern Europe was breaking up during the early 1990s, and the
international system was in upheaval. The UN grasped the opportunity by
holding the largest-ever international conference,
The United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, with more
than 10,000 participants from all over the globe. Scotland-UN was
determined that Scotland would be represented in some form, although it
was impossible to obtain a slot on the meeting agenda itself. And so a
simple public relations exercise was adopted, with a printed statement
setting out the Scottish case in a form that could be distributed by the
Scotland-UN representative on the spot and attract support from
governments and non-governmental organisations represented there.
The world was teetering on the brink of a breakthrough
and, sure enough, the moment for which Scotland-UN had waited arrived
after 14 years of relentless and determined campaigning. The difference
was that there was now a body of international law governing Scotland’s
case, giving the opportunity to wield a legal and political weapon
instead of simply making representations. The opportunity to exploit
the new legal and political situation opened with the Council of
Europe’s Meeting of Heads of State and Government in Vienna on 8/9
October 1993.
Armed with advance intelligence, Scotland-UN set out to
influence the outcome of the European Summit by means of an intensive
campaign of discreet diplomacy backed up by a succinct document on the
lines of a modern Declaration of Arbroath:
The
CoE Memorandum 1993 – the decisive breakthrough. The operation
was an outstanding success in every respect despite determined sabotage
attempts by London, and the Labour Party in particular.
The recommendation in the Scotland-UN Memorandum that the
Council of Europe should set up a system to enforce observance of the
international standards of pluralist democracy, the rule of law, and
respect for human and civic rights was in fact adopted by the CoE, which
developed a suitable monitoring system over the next few years. And the
examination of the UK’s democratic system that started in June 1996
resulted in a damning verdict on its shortcomings.
Scotland-UN now had a two-edged sword in its hand. In
the first place, there was no way that the system of governing Scotland
(and Wales) by Secretary of State could stand up to examination in the
light of the international legal standards of democracy that were now
about to be enforced, by international sanctions if necessary.
Politically, the situation was even more dramatic. All
the international organisations were at that stage concentrating on
forcing the ex-Communist reform states of Eastern Europe to adopt the
international standards of pluralist democracy, the rule of law and
respect for human and civic rights. There was, of course, no way they
could do that if they ignored blatant infringements of the same norms by
an established Western state.
The UK had to fall into line or be subjected to the same
sanctions as the East European countries, because the then government of
Scotland was cutting right across international policy at a major
turning point in European and indeed world history.
On both counts, therefore, the UK was caught in a pincer
grip, and the Council of Europe was only representing all the other
international authorities that would have been obliged to intervene if
the CoE had not already done so.
The UK authorities, and the Labour Party in particular,
have done everything possible to try to conceal this background to
devolution and the restoration of democratic systems in Scotland and
Wales. A large part of the story can nevertheless be pieced together
from archives of the Council of Europe that have been released to date.
Research by American supporters of Scotland-UN brought to
light a number of source documents already cleared by the Council of
Europe that broaden the picture and more than substantiate Scotland-UN’s
account of how the restoration of democratic government in Scotland and
Wales came about. The overall picture revealed by these
Source References is not yet complete, and must await the
opening of the records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and
Cabinet Office amongst others, but the evidence is quite sufficient to
substantiate the Scotland-UN presentation of events.
The UK Conservative government under John Major was
baffled by this assault from a completely unexpected quarter, and was no
doubt thankful that this hot potato bounced onto the lap of Tony Blair’s
Labour administration after the 1997 election.
Blair had had no plans to do anything about the home rule
for Scotland that Labour had promised for 100 years with no intention of
ever delivering. This time, there was no way out, and devolution had to
head Blair’s government programme – a situation that he described as “a
damnable nuisance.”
The Council of Europe helped him to clarify his mind a
few weeks in advance of the election by issuing a statement of the
sanctions that would be used against any European state that refused to
adhere to the international standards of pluralist democracy. And the
Scotland-UN Committee went for the kill by issuing a detailed assertion
of
The Sovereignty of the People of Scotland.
The Scotland-UN Committee remained very active over the
period of establishing the restored Scottish governmental system,
including direct involvement in the 1997 referendum campaign. While
this mostly entailed participating in the campaign organised by the
Scottish National Party (the Labour and Conservative parties were
conspicuous by their absence from the streets during the campaign),
there were also individual Scotland-UN initiatives. The shattering size
of the Yes majority in the referendum put the restoration of democracy
in Scotland beyond question, and justified the 18 years of exhausting
struggle by Scotland-UN.
With its principal objective now fulfilled, the Committee
remained in being for several years until the revived Scottish
Parliament and Government could be properly “run in”. Since the new
national institutions were initially kept under close control by London,
it was necessary to retain a Scottish institution with international
connections and the will to use them if it should become necessary.
The necessity was shown on numerous occasions, because
the London stranglehold on the new Scottish Parliament and Government
(initially called an “Executive”), and the insulting transfer of
devolved decision making back to Westminster under the so-called Sewel
motions, was a fair indication that, without international compulsion
and the threat of sanctions, devolution would never have happened. And
so Scotland-UN continued to act as Scotland’s eyes and ears abroad on
important issues.
One of them that involved a great deal of activity was
fishing policy. Having got nowhere with polite representations to the
EU, Scotland-UN finally sent a blistering
Letter to the Fisheries Commissioner of the European Union
spelling out the reality of the devastating damage the EU had caused to
Scotland and demanding a remedy. As usual, the EU neither replied nor
acknowledged receipt, but it did in time make some cosmetic changes to
its fisheries policy that altered nothing of substance.
The Scotland-UN Committee was formally wound up in 2007,
its mission accomplished with the restoration of the Scottish Parliament
and Government. It thereby presented the Scottish National Party with
the key to the door for its independence goal. That goal is not one
that can be achieved by international diplomacy alone, but demands a
massive declaration of purpose from the Scots themselves. That year the
SNP formed the Scottish Government, and there was now an assurance that
it would function without constantly looking over its shoulder in the
direction of London as all its predecessors had done.
And so the Scotland-UN Committee quietly bowed out of the
political scene, having served its purpose more than well and left a
lasting legacy. Until independence happens it remains the one and only
Scottish home-rule institution in 300 years to have concrete results to
show for its efforts.
* * 0 * *
The
Scotland-UN Committee was active from July 1979 till being wound up in
mid 2007, a period of 28 years, with its peak activity leading up to the
reconstitution of the Scottish Parliament and Government in 1999. The
Committee played a leading and very decisive role in the devolution
process, since it was not only the source of some of the more
revolutionary ideas on the Scottish political structure, but principally
because its incisive international diplomatic campaign, pressed home
with utter determination backed up by first-hand diplomatic expertise of
a high order, was what broke the ice of three centuries and finally
brought about action on the restoration of democratic government in
Scotland - and also Wales. Without it, nothing of what followed would
have happened.
In terms
of results achieved the Scotland-UN Committee is unique in the history
of the Scottish home rule movement over the past 300 years. It is not
practicable to list the entire range of material covering the 18 years
of its main activity, much of which is repetitive or confidential, and
most of its verbal diplomatic negotiations are unrecorded and/or still
diplomatically sensitive. But the cross-section presented on this site
gives a rounded picture of its activities, ideas, and contribution to
the future government of Scotland as well as laying the foundation for
independence at a future date.
You can
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