"The wrong that is as one with England’s name;
Tyranny with boast of liberty; shame
With boast of righteousness".

Francis Adams: Songs of the Army of the Night

With the advent of the new Scottish Parliament and the prospect of complete separation from England on the horizon, it is natural that the English nation will develop its own policies with the regard to the advancement of English issues on the national and international stage - especially if there is a nation with rival domestic and foreign policies right next to it. Of course Siol nan Gaidheal welcomes a future independent English parliament and offers its goodwill to that parliament in the hope that there can once more be cordial and good-natured relations between our two independent and sovereign nations.

However, the path to this great day may yet be long and bitter. The Home Secretary, Jack Straw has just “warned” us that the English are “potentially very aggressive, very violent” and will increasingly articulate their Englishness after devolution. As readers of this site will know, a lion is at his most savage and dangerous, when he is backed into a corner, defending the last remaining remnants of his pride, his power and his possessions. For the last two decades the English Conservative Party – the self-styled defender of the union -  has resolutely refused to give Scotland even the most minor say over their own affairs. And with a small but limited power of self-government given to the Scots by the British Labour Party in 1999, English politicians’ opposition to our independence is going to become more intense than ever before. We are all that is left of their sick and dying empire. Their historical gains which once amounted to one quarter of the world are soon to end up where they started off – a small rump in the corner of an island. Of course Scottish Nationalism has always been a peaceful cause - our grievance being with the arrogance of the English politicians at Westminster who for hundreds of years have stirred up the arrogance of the Englishmen and women in the street, and who yet may stir up a resentment amongst their people in the face of Scottish self-government. John Major has already seen the advantage of encouraging them to one last act of defiance, before they are forced by the Scots to look at the small and insignificant place which they now occupy in the world. English Conservative MPs, such as Tony Marlow and Teresa Gorman have themselves been lining up to warn the Scots that they had better not stir up English Nationalism or it will be all the worse for us if we do. In their anger and discomfort over their future, as Europeans of all sorts speak sharply to them – the French and the Germans to name but two – they will take their spite out on us evermore, by seeking more desperately not only to crush our desire for independence, but to conduct lengthy and bitter battles (legal, at best) over our economic and natural assets.

For an example of this, one only needs to look at the situation in Ireland. For the fifty or so years after 1867, through electoral politics and campaigns for land reform in Ireland, and by Irish people in the House of Commons, the overwhelming majority of Irish people expressed desire for independence. Yet even the most pathetic plans for limited self-government within the British Empire were defeated in the English Parliament and vigorously opposed by the Conservative and Unionist Party by the use of any means possible - including the illegal importation of arms for the defeat of Home Rule by force!

Already within this toytown Labour Parliament in Edinburgh we have seen the Labour government using the most underhand and disdainful methods conceivable to block the SNP from getting into power. We have now witnessed the ludicrous and absurd situation where if a majority of Scots vote for independence they are prevented from getting into power, yet the Liberal Democrats whom nobody voted for are running the show! And now we hear that Dewar, McLeish, and Reid etc, and their sleazy cohorts in London are to integrate the “Scottish Executive” even further in with the English cabinet to prevent any chance of the Scots aspiring to national sovereignty and self-determination, as if we were not tied into the chains and slavery of Westminster rule enough. If this is what it is to be like under Labour, what the hell would a right-wing Conservative government propose should they achieve power in England? WAKE UP SCOTLAND! IS THIS THE FUTURE FOR ONE OF THE OLDEST NATIONS IN EUROPE? A NATION WHICH FOR CENTURIES WAS RULED BY AN UNBROKEN LINE OF KINGS AND QUEENS AND HAD A STRONG AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT WHICH TRADED WITH THE REST OF EUROPE??? HAVING NOT EVEN BEEN A SHADOW OF THAT FOR 300 YEARS, ARE WE TO BE FOREVER CONSIGNED TO THE SAME EURO-REGIONAL STATUS AS THAT OF BAVARIA OR CATALONIA? ARE WE TO ACHIEVE INDEPENDENCE IN 15 OR 20 YEARS, BY WHICH TIME THE ENGLISH WILL HAVE BLED ALL OUR RESOURCES DRY?

The whole foundation of our aim for complete and total independence rather than devolution as advocated by the British Labour Party is that without a full identity – recognised and acknowledged by the rest of the world, any self-government plans will have completely missed the whole point! There has always been an underlying weakness of the SNP to rely on the second part of their aims – to further all Scottish interests, while the drive for complete independence is put on the backburner. And now we hear that the aims for independence are to be watered down by the SNP’s ditching of their plans for an independence referendum, probably through pressure from the Liberal Democrats and Labour!  Political quislings and traitors such as this demand a referendum for just about everything except Scottish independence. THIS IS BECAUSE, AS IT HAS BEEN FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT WILL NEVER TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWER!

Anyone with any concept of nationhood will understand that only with an increasing sense of Scotland’s cultural and historical awareness will the Scots’ understand more about their country enough to rise to the challenge of independence. Hugh MacDiarmid led the way in his belief that a rise in cultural awareness was the core concept crucial for Scotland’s rebirth. Only with full independent and sovereign status, recognised (most importantly) by England and other foreign countries, can Scotland finally end the interference and colonial grievances of her dominant “partner” and take her place confidently and assuredly on the international forums of humankind.