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The Scotland UN Committee was founded in the summer of 1979, just after
the referendum that resulted in a majority in favour of the proposal to
set up a Scottish Assembly with limited powers, and before the scandal
of the so-called “repeal” of the Scotland Act by the incoming Thatcher
government. Its purpose was to take this flagrantly unconstitutional
action, and the Scottish case for self-determination, to the United
Nations and the international authorities generally.
The Early Years
Accordingly, a submission was made to the UN Secretariat in New York in
1979, together with most of the third of a million signatures collected
on the petition that authorised Scotland-UN to make diplomatic
representations on Scotland's behalf (some signatures arrived too late,
and are included in the S-UN papers lodged with the National Library of
Scotland). A Scotland-UN delegation visited the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights at UN Geneva in the autumn of 1980, when a
major document was presented setting out the Scottish case. Thereafter,
the still open file in Geneva attained substantial proportions with our
documentation of every sin committed against Scotland in subsequent
years. The Committee also presented the Scottish case to the EEC
Parliament, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE,
now the OSCE) at its meetings in Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow and
Helsinki, and every national government in the world, amongst many
others.
A Petition to the Queen
on the issue remains unanswered to this day. This, however, was an
essential step, because in order to make a convincing case at
international level we had to demonstrate that all possibility of
obtaining redress at domestic level had been tried and failed. Some
international organisations make this a condition of accepting a
submission, and the unanswered petition was all the evidence that we
needed.
As early as 1980 we succeeded in destroying an attempt at a “final
solution of the Scottish question” in the Council of Europe in
Strasbourg, when the Thatcher government tried to obtain international
approval of its assertion that there was no demand for devolution within
the UK. For diplomatic reasons it was essential to nip all such moves in
the bud. Our submission on the Stone of Destiny brought a United
Nations committee in Paris openly onto Scotland's side (the action also
created uproar for weeks on the Glasgow Herald’s letters page after it
had been reported), and stoked international pressure for the return of
the Stone. We “brainwashed” members of the United States Congress as
well as President Reagan personally. Three of our representatives
addressed a week-long United Nations conference in Geneva on the
Scottish situation, and on the side established a whole series of
discreet diplomatic contacts. These are only examples, and for
diplomatic reasons it may never be possible to tell the full story,
because we are still bound by the confidential nature of our contacts.
Since we have operated almost exclusively at international diplomatic
level on Scotland’s behalf our activities impinged only indirectly on
the home-rule movement at home. This mostly took the form of feedback of
constitutional know-how we had amassed over the years through our
contacts with some of the world’s leading experts abroad. Our documents
entitled Scotland’s Parliament - the Right of Recall by the People, and
The Sovereignty of the People of Scotland, exerted some influence on the
course of events at domestic political level. These, however, were
basically spin-off from our main functions at international level. In
later years we issued major influential papers on such subjects as the
fishing situation and Scotland’s foreign policy. We also took up the
subject of fishing with the European Union directly, and after several
years are still awaiting a reply.
From the very beginning, Scotland-UN cooperated closely with other
organisations active in the cause of the Scottish Parliament. S-UN
members were among the most vociferous participants in the Campaign for
a Scottish Assembly (later renamed Campaign for a Scottish Parliament,
after a paper by a Scotland-UN member pointed out that this was the only
correct designation for the Scottish legislature). The expression
“Scotland’s Claim of Right to Self-Determination”, used in the first
S-UN submission to the United Nations, was taken over by the CSA/CSP,
and later by the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which was itself an
S-UN initiative. Shortly after the 1979 “repeal” charade in Westminster,
Scotland-UN circulated a Blue Paper to all Scottish local authorities
with the proposal that a Constitutional Convention be held to consider
what steps were necessary in the light of the new situation. A date was
set, and premises were booked in Edinburgh University, but the response
did not justify proceeding with the event at that time. The Convention
project later took off after an article by a Scotland-UN member in the
magazine Radical Scotland had set out its main structure and procedures.
One interesting piece of spin-off was the famous "break-in" to the
building on the Calton Hill in Edinburgh that had been adapted for the
Scottish Assembly that was to be set up under the Scotland Act approved
by the 1979 referendum. A team led by Jim Sillars entered the building
after the so-called "repeal" of the act by the Thatcher government and
held a parliamentary debate, but were charged with breaking and
entering. Scotland-UN provided the legal case for the defence on
fundamental constitutional principles When it went to appeal in the
High Court under Lord Wheatley, a known unionist, the court was faced
with either formally declaring the "repeal" to be valid, which would
have flown in the face of all the relevant constitutional principles and
opened the matter to international intervention, or declaring it
invalid, which would have been a frontal conflict with the
legislature. In the end, the court dodged the issue of judicial review
of legislation by declaring that it had no power to decide the matter.
In presenting the Scottish case internationally it was necessary to
demonstrate that this was not simply the view of a group of activists,
but that it represented a broad national movement. It had to be made
clear that Scotland-UN was only one of many aspects of this national
movement, and the evidence for this had to be produced on numerous
occasions. The existence of organisations like the Campaign for a
Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Constitutional Convention was only
the tip of the iceberg of evidence that had to be presented in order to
make the case. This covered a broad spectrum, from SNP election results
and publishing trends to the resuits of opinion polls and the activities
of innumerable other organisations. This was all essential in order to
make the case. One that made a significant impression in diplomatic
circles was the Vigil for Democracy on the Calton Hill; it was the
perfect kind of proof of public opinion that we needed.
In the 1993 Memorandum to the Council of Europe we offered to arrange
for a delegation of representatives from all of the relevant
institutions to meet with the Council to discuss the situation in
Scotland. In the end, however, the Council of Europe took the matter
further on the strength of the Memorandum alone, and started a series of
investigations that exposed the serious shortcomings of the UK's
democratic system.
Then the World Around
Us Changed
After the revolutionary events of 1989, with the end of the Cold War,
the fall of the Iron Curtain (which was attended by a Scotland-UN
representative) and the break-up of the bipolar world system, our task
changed significantly. We were no longer restricted to simply making
representations to other governments and international organisations on
Scotland's behalf, but could now take advantage of the political and
legal opportunities opened up by the new developments. The emphasis of
our activities switched from the United Nations – without entirely
neglecting the global aspects – to a concentration on the new European
“political architecture” that was starting to emerge. Our judgement
proved correct, for it was here that the final breakthrough occurred.
Following is a short description of a major – and, as it transpired,
decisive – coup we achieved in Strasbourg, which turned out to be the
final breakthrough in the centuries-old saga of the Scottish Parliament.
Due to diplomatic secrecy it may be years before the full story can be
told, although the first concrete evidence is now emerging with the
opening of the records of the Council of Europe. The relevant papers of
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office will not be
available for some time.
Meantime, it may give our readers an impression of the “other world” in
which we operated for almost three decades, in the rarefied atmosphere
of international diplomacy at the highest level, and of the issues
involved. Some explanation of the international diplomatic background is
necessary for an understanding of what follows - and that is based to a
great extent on information from diplomatic sources that cannot be
named.
In September 1993 the Scotland-UN Committee presented a memorandum to
the Council of Europe, the oldest of the major European institutions, on
the occasion of its summit meeting the following month in Vienna.
Nationalism in Europe was to be one of the main issues for discussion by
the European heads of state and government, and the Scotland-UN
Committee wanted to ensure that Scotland’s case would not go unheard or
be misrepresented at the meeting, as had happened before.
One must understand that the major “civilian” European institutions
(leaving NATO and others out of consideration) all have their own
specialised functions, albeit with a degree of overlapping. The
Strasbourg-based Council of Europe (CoE), now with 47 member states,
exercises a wide range of functions, including setting the European
standards for democracy, the rule of law and human rights. It is the CoE
that operates the European Court of Human Rights.
The standards set by the CoE in these fields have also been adopted by
the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Every applicant for membership of the EU
or the OSCE has to comply with the rules laid down by the CoE. Every
country that seeks development aid from these institutions has to agree
to these standards before a contract will be signed. It is the CoE’s
rules on pluralist democracy, the rule of law and human rights that NATO
(military) and the OSCE (civilian) are enforcing and developing in the
Balkans and other trouble spots. No country has ever been allowed to
join the European Union (and its predecessors) without first having
become a member of the Council of Europe.
* * * * *
It is a diplomatic axiom that security is indivisible nowadays – that
there can be no security for any individual country in the midst of an
insecure world. Furthermore, the whole concept of European security has
been redefined in recent years, with the military aspect now rather in
the background. Uncontrolled mass migration and unsafe nuclear power
stations are issues of international security, as are undemocratic
governmental systems that can become a focus for political and social
unrest that is capable of spreading across frontiers.
This is why the European institutions in 1993 were making massive
efforts to stabilise and consolidate the ex-Communist reform countries
of Central and Eastern Europe on the basis of the Council of Europe’s
“three pillars” - pluralist democracy, the rule of law, and respect for
human rights. The methods used were the carrot and stick - vast
resources made available for political development, but no aid or
admission to the European institutions if those three pillars were not
built solidly into the new state systems.
The New Power
Diplomacy
Clearly, however, the CoE, OSCE, EU, NATO, etc. could not dictate
democratic standards to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe
while simultaneously tolerating a flagrant violation of these principles
(the Scottish governmental system) in an existing member state.
It therefore came as a rude shock to the diplomats who were laying down
the law on pluralist democracy to the countries in transition from
Communism when the Scotland-UN Committee pointed out the details of the
Scottish constitutional and political structure to them (at that time a
Tory Secretary of State and his ministers running the country with the
support of only 6 Scottish Conservative MPs). As the Scotland-UN
memorandum put it, the Council of Europe was rejecting applications for
membership from countries whose political systems did not meet its
standards, while at the same time ignoring the existence of a
pseudo-democratic autocracy in an existing member country – a system
that did not even possess the trappings of democracy that existed in
Eastern Europe under communist dictatorship.
Clearly, the existence of such a political system within an established
Western state was cutting right across the Council of Europe’s policy
and was endangering the democratic security (the current diplomatic
expression) of the entire continent at a particularly crucial turning
point in Europe’s history.
The East European diplomats in particular, who had taken an interest in
Scotland for several years, were not going to put up with an ongoing
sermon on pluralist democracy while nothing was being done to correct
the Scottish system. The situation was all the more delicate because the
Russian Federation under President Boris Yeltsin was desperate to get
into the Council of Europe, the gateway to the G8 group and much else.
Accordingly, the lengthy S-UN Memorandum – a modern Declaration of
Arbroath – was sent to the CoE General Secretariat and the foreign
ministries of all its member countries as well as to those of Russia and
the other East European states. Some of the issues were also discussed
with CoE officials in advance.
This procedure was carefully thought out, for two reasons. We were under
no illusions about the ability of the UK government to have the matter
swept under the carpet through its diplomats on secondment to the
Council of Europe. We wanted to pre-empt any such action by directly
involving three dozen other member governments, when the Scottish case
could no longer be kept secret. Secondly, we were out to use Russia and
the other applicant countries of Eastern Europe as a counterweight by
presenting the Scottish case as a weapon they could use to advance
their own.
There was consternation at the Council of Europe when the facts of the
Scottish political situation were revealed, although CoE
Secretary-General Catherine Lalumičre outspokenly praised the
memorandum’s presentation of the Scottish case. Scotland-UN
deliberately played the major powers of Europe against each other in a
hard-nosed exercise of diplomatic blackmail. The gist of the S-UN
communication to the applicant countries of Eastern Europe was: look at
what they are demanding from you, and then look at what is happening to
Scotland in an existing member state. The Russians in particular knew
how to use it. Among the points it made were:
“If there are to be criteria for admission to membership, it follows
that there ought to be a system for monitoring the maintenance of these
standards after entry...”
“We therefore strongly recommend that the Council of Europe should
establish a mechanism for monitoring the maintenance of democratic
standards within member states...”
“These democratic standards must include the freedom of identifiable
peoples to exercise their right of self-determination as guaranteed
under international law.”
The Council of Europe was thereby forced to abide by its own rules,
whether it liked it or not. The Vienna Declaration subsequently issued
by the 1993 Summit - quite obviously influenced by the Scotland-UN
submission, which had proposed certain international sanctions against
the United Kingdom in the event of non-compliance – expressed the
Council of Europe’s determination to ensure that all of its member
states adhere without reservation to the commitments they have
undertaken under its auspices.
However, it took some time to translate this into practice. The new
procedures for monitoring these commitments in the areas of pluralist
democracy, the rule of law and human rights were worked out by the CoE
during 1994 and 1995, and finally approved by the Committee of Ministers
in the spring of 1996. The first UK monitoring session, held in June
1996, covered the issues of freedom of information and expression as
well as the country’s democratic institutions, including political
parties and free elections.
The investigation by the CoE Monitoring Committee took place in four
stages: Review-Debate-Conclusions-Measures. It was held in secret, for
diplomatic reasons, but the report on the UK was of course distinctly
unflattering in the light of the Scotland-UN memorandum and the
Council’s own investigation of the situation. The documents that have
been released to date show that the UK's democratic system was
considered to be on a level with those of the most primitive states
in Europe.
The discussions and conclusions in Strasbourg were confidential, but
more and more information is nevertheless coming to light that
conclusively proves the accuracy of the Scotland-UN account of how
devolution came about, although a full report will have to await the
opening of the records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the
Cabinet Office. A second monitoring series was started, covering the
workings of the judicial system and democracy in local government (the
latter badly needing scrutiny in Scotland), and this programme was
expanded into other areas of government in subsequent years. These
investigations by the Council of Europe completely vindicated the case
made to it by the Scotland-UN Committee.
There could be no question of applying double standards throughout
Europe, and action had to be taken on Scotland, Wales, London and
various other UK constitutional issues (appointment of judges, etc.).
The conclusions arrived at by the CoE Committee of Ministers, from its
first monitoring meeting in June 1996 onwards, had to head the new
Labour government’s programme in 1997, or there could have been
far-reaching consequences, incuding international sanctions under the
existing rules.
It should be emphasised that, while the Scotland-UN Memorandum initiated
the process, and played a significant part as a reference document in
what came after, once the Council of Europe had inaugurated its
monitoring system and its own investigations it was not just Scotland,
but the entire UK democratic structure that was found to be defective
and in need of drastic overhaul. There was no mention of Wales or
London, or the procedure for appointing judges, in the Memorandum,
because the Council extended the investigation into those and other
fields on its own initiative.
The Thatcher government, whose corrupt manipulation of the 1979
referendum was by now clear to everyone, was not amused by the
Scotland-UN activities, to put it mildly. In reply to a parliamentary
question at Westminster in 1989 by Dennis Canavan, MP (the only Labour
politician to cooperate with Scotland-UN) Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher had stated that she did not consider the matter of
self-determination for Scotland to be cognisable by the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe (Scotland-UN's campaign at the CSCE
had clearly begun to bite).
That attitude very shortly had to be revised. Another question by Mr
Canavan, to Labour Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in January 1999,
elicited a grudging admission that the investigation by the Council of
Europe had in fact taken place and that the CoE would release
the relevant information in due course - early but clear proof of the
success of the Scotland-UN action in Strasbourg.
The Breakthrough
The heat was on the UK by now, and there was no longer any possibility
of putting off reform of the Scottish political and administrative
structure. This hot potato initially landed on the lap of the
Conservative government under Prime Minister John Major, who had no time
to do anything about it before he was out of office at the 1997
election. He was no doubt extremely thankful that the matter immediately
bounced onto the lap of his Labour successor, Tony Blair, who had had no
intention of doing anything about devolution, but was now forced to take
action, whether he liked it or not. The lack of serious political
opposition to the devolution legislation may seem surprising, but it
merely reflects the fact that all the party leaderships at Westminster
knew the background and were aware that it was an obligation that could
not be avoided.
The matter had been exercising the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
behind closed doors since the 1993 European Summit (a copy of the S-UN
Memorandum had of course been sent to London too), and especially since
the first UK monitoring session that was held by the CoE Committee of
Ministers in June 1996. The Labour leadership had tried to kill the
Strasbourg action as early as 1993, even before attaining government
office, but the attempt ended in a monumental fiasco that never
achieved publicity. However, by that stage devolution was not a party
project at all, but a foreign policy commitment that had to be
fulfilled, no matter what government was in office.
The Council of Europe papers that are now becoming available reveal that
the UK's local and regional governmental system came nowhere near
meeting the international norms, and indeed that the UK was regarded as
being on the same level as Europe's most democratically underdeveloped
states in that respect.
The central point, made in ultra-polite diplomatic language with
concealed fangs, was that failure to adhere to the CoE's democratic
norms would be "incompatible with membership of the Council". In plain
language, get Scotland, Wales, etc. sorted out or be expelled from the
Council of Europe!
This would have been a sanction with very far-reaching effects, because
membership of other European organisations like the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) or the European Union (EU) is
also conditional on adherence to the Council of Europe's standards.
Such a move would have set off a political earthquake throughout
Europe, to say nothing of its effect on UK domestic politics, and
especially Scotland.
The decision to hold another (unnecessary) referendum on devolution must
be seen against this background. It was possibly seen as a delaying or
even a potentially wrecking tactic now that action on the Scottish
situation was unavoidable. It was simply the minimum action likely to be
acceptable in Strasbourg. Blair would never have given the matter the
parliamentary priority it received if the authorities in Strasbourg,
concerned about the effect on Eastern Europe, had not been at his heels
in order to get rid of this embarrassment as soon as possible. However,
the overwhelmingly positive result of the referendum put the issue
beyond doubt, and the result was that Russia and the others were
admitted as full members of the Council of Europe, and Scotland and
Wales got their parliaments.
Needless to say, the entire foreign diplomatic corps in the UK was
keeping a close watch on the referendum, and in the event of any rigging
tactics this time the UK government was going to be in serious trouble
at international level, especially with the EU presidency due to start a
few weeks later. The arch-centralist Robin Cook’s earsplitting silence
during the referendum campaign no doubt owed much to the realisation
that, as Foreign Secretary, he was the one who would have to do the
explaining before the international authorities if Labour made a mess of
it this time - bearing in mind that a fully functioning Scottish
national legislature, and not simply a referendum, was the proof of the
pudding in this instance.
The international situation generally - i.e. quite apart from the CoE -
had also changed since 1989 in the respect that there were now other
sanctions available for use against any government that failed to
maintain the required democratic standards. For example, the European
Union’s Intergovernmental Conference agreed in 1996 that this would
entail the suspension of that country’s rights of membership, including
its voting rights in the EU Council.
This, of course, would have had the effect of a political nuclear bomb
in the international community, to say nothing of its effect on
Scotland. So Tony Blair and his friends knew very well why they, no
doubt grinding their teeth, were calling for a double Yes vote in the
referendum – at least at leadership level, because the party was
conspicuously absent from the scene at local level during the referendum
campaign, which was carried by the SNP’s campaigning organisation, and
by the Liberals. Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer
Gordon Brown both ostentatiously boycotted the opening of the Scottish
Parliament itself, and later the Holyrood building, in order to
demonstrate their personal opposition to the whole devolution project.
* * * * *
That is the situation which Tony Blair described as “a damnable
nuisance”, although he did a typical politician’s volte face by making a
virtue out of necessity and claiming the referendum as the Labour
Party’s policy all along! The truth is, however, that the centuries-old
home rule nut was finally cracked by Scotland-UN with a piece of
hard-nosed international diplomacy that involved playing major powers
against each other, and which in the end forced London to concede the
referendum or face international sanctions.
The Labour leadership had no intention of doing anything at all to
restore the Scottish Parliament until their hand was forced. Their
attempts to kill the devolution project having been unsuccessful, Labour
was left with no choice but to accept the new reality while at the same
time trying to hijack the movement and limit it as far as possible. This
meant maintaining control over it, compensating for it to reduce its
effects, and presenting it as a Labour initiative while suppressing the
truth about how it came into being.
The instrument for the implementation of this policy was Donald Dewar,
Secretary of State for Scotland, who in previous years had ridiculed the
very idea of a “toytown parliament” in Edinburgh. It was Dewar who
presided over the unconstitutional attempt to shift the Scotland-England
marine border far to the north of Berwick, in order to transfer 6,000
square miles of oil and other resources into the English jurisdiction
without inviting Scottish opinion. It was Dewar who came up with the
totally superfluous Holyrood project, without as much as asking the
people’s representatives in Westminster or Edinburgh whether they even
wanted a new parliament building, as a means of regaining the initiative
on devolution for Labour as well as glorifying himself. And it was Dewar
who pushed through the selection process for Labour MSP candidates which
ensured that they would be mainly intellectually downmarket and easily
controlled unionist party hacks, in order to keep Holyrood under
London’s thumb. It was a catalogue of intrigue and treachery
unparalleled in our country’s recent history.
There is therefore no truth whatsoever in the assertion that the
devolution of political power to Scotland, and the restoration of the
Scottish Parliament and Government, was an initiative by the Labour Party.
The full story of Labour's attempts to retain power in Scotland by any
means whatsoever has still to be told, and indeed these tactics
(including the suppression of the real facts of devolution) were
successful to the extent that they enabled the party to cling to office
for a further eight years. Truth may be a philosophical concept, but
the hard fact is that the restoration of democratic government in
Scotland was forced on London by the international authorities as a
foreign policy commitment that had to be implemented under the implied
threat of international sanctions.
The Struggle Goes On
The Scotland-UN members could relate anthologies of the anti-home rule
tactics we encountered over the years. Our telephones were permanently
tapped (which provided us with considerable amusement by passing on (dis)information
we wanted “them” to hear) and for years on end our mail was opened
without even a pretence at concealment. A letter signed personally by a
foreign head of state with the presidential crest on the back was
steamed open and not even re-sealed.
Home-based committee members were followed and harassed on the streets
of Glasgow by Special Branch and uniformed police. One of our
representatives in Washington had to drop out because of threats to his
career. A surreptitious attempt to unseat one of our European
representatives, including a particularly vile campaign of unfounded
character assassination that was organised direct from 10 Downing
Street, ended in an unprecedented diplomatic disaster – which, to our
regret, we are precluded from publicising, at least for the meantime,
for diplomatic reasons. A student member was told that if he wanted his
PhD ... and so on.
Nor have there been any scruples against using more underhand methods.
One member survived an assassination attempt on the A77 on the way from
Glasgow to Kilmarnock, the only result being a large-calibre bullet hole
in his car. The police, of course, never found the culprits, despite a
comprehensive forensic investigation. According to the official version,
one of our two legal advisers committed suicide by shooting himself in
the back of his head, walking fifty yards to drop the gun into a ditch,
and then strolling back to his car to die in the driver’s seat.
Character assassination has been used extensively against us, at home
and abroad.
It has been a long, hard uphill battle against every weapon an
unscrupulous establishment could turn on us. We are therefore all the
more grateful for the support and encouragement we have received at home
and abroad - not least from around one third of a million Scots who
signed our petition requesting us to take diplomatic action on
Scotland’s behalf, because this was our legitimisation for doing so.
Thanks also go to all former members of Scotland-UN who made their
contribution in their time, for we all stand on the shoulders of those
who went before. And, not least, to the many people in high places who
could not allow their names to be used, but who actively encouraged our
work, and in some cases substantially financed it.
The legacy of Scotland-UN will not be seen in Scotland alone, for the
Council of Europe’s monitoring system that is now going to protect other
European peoples against their own governments is a direct result of our
submission on behalf of the people of Scotland. Indeed, its effect is
likely to be global, for it is practically certain that the system will
eventually be taken over by the large number of similar regional
organisations that have emerged in all the other continents in recent
years and have modelled themselves on the pioneering European
institutions.
The Scotland-UN Committee was formally wound up in 2007, its mission
complete with the restoration of democracy in Scotland, the recall of
the Scottish parliament and the establishment of a Scottish Government,
albeit only in devolved form. Although this primary aim - the recall of
the Scottish Parliament – has been achieved, and further developments
are a matter for the Scottish people, there is still considerable scope
for backsliding and sabotage in order to hinder its effectiveness and
prevent necessary further developments. And so the people behind
Scotland-UN are keeping their powder dry. Consideration is being given
to the formation of a successor organisation to represent Scotland at
international level, and in the event of any further sabotage attempts
we will not hesitate to reopen the whole matter at global and European
level and call the international authorities to Scotland’s aid, as our
forefathers did in 1320. |
