MA: Routes to Independence with Graeme McCormick LLB

We all know we want independence - but how do we get there? What are the options?
In this episode, our guest Graeme McCormick shares a legal perspective on the various routes which could be on the table, including UDI, Section 30 orders, Dissolving the Union, plebiscite elections and more.
He also has some inspirational ideas for actions the Scottish government could take with its limited devolved powers that would be game changing for all Scottish citizens right now, as well as providing more than enough funding for the transition to an independent state.
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Music: Inspired by Kevin MacLeod

[@charlesmugleston6144]

Thank you ladies - just the clarity of vision needed / provided by Graeme X

[@lynnecopland5178]

Very informative. Well done everyone involved.

[@jimmyjohnstone6096]

Absolutely brilliant, interesting and thought provoking, thank you ! 👏👏👏

[@Klochrie]

If the SNP membership don't vote for this man as President on the 14th. The SNP will have failed the country.

[@alastairramage5564]

Very impressed with your site . I am 85 and will probably not see the end result. But I support the movement because it’s the right thing to do . Even more so because of the incompetence and avarice of the current UK governments

[@thomasmurray7615]

i'm over 70 and I have always wanted Independence since I was a boy. !!!! FREEDOM !!!! INDEPENDENCE FOR SCOTLAND NOW !!!! ARE YOU YES YET ? IF NOT, WHY NOT ? !!!!

[@charlescollins5471]

This could easily have been titled: Where there's a will, there is a way. Very interesting indeed and providing the kind of clarity of thought which can often be missing from such conversations. There are of course several points which could be taken issue with but there is enough bickering and water muddying happening elsewhere. Having said that and not wishing to take the pedantic view I do feel obliged to comment on the status of a Provisional Scottish Government. Core skills of the "political thugs" (very apt description) that Graeme mentions is sophistry and semantics. Language is very important and so lets start as we mean to go on. Lets not have a Provisional Scottish Government/Parliament declare itself as sovereign but rather that it is the Government/Parliament of the Sovereign Scottish People. This channel just keeps getting better and better. Thanks again ladies.

[@papajahko7121]

Excellent live stream 👏👏👏

[@woofpet]

Fantastic! Going to have to watch this (a few times I suspect 😂) to get it all straight in my head. One Q that occurs right now is what would happen if the non independence supporting MPs refuse to withdraw from Westminster?

[@ScottishIndyPodExtra]

check about 17 mins in he talks about that then Marlene asks a follow up question later on

[@shirleysavoury5638]

Me too. This is my second viewing.

[@woofpet]

@@ScottishIndyPodExtra yes, I commented before I had watched it all the way through 😂

[@ScottishIndyPodExtra]

😆@@woofpet

[@sn4rff]

another really interesting discussion, thanks.

[@kulaprabha]

You’re welcome!

[@ScottishIndyPodExtra]

glad you enjoyed it!

[@woofpet]

Thanks

[@nollem41]

Under this SNP there never will be Indepednence !

[@IndependenceLive]

Don’t particularly care who is in charge as long as we get independence.

[@ianmacrae2710]

Graeme, you said Scotland is not a colony. If it isn’t a colony what is it? Define Scotland.

[@GraemeMcCormick]

A partner in a voluntary union which has been taken for granted , not through malice but the superiority complex of its political establishment. I could go on, but I won't.

[@ianmacrae2710]

@@GraemeMcCormick If Scotland were in a voluntary union, when Scotland asked England for a Section 30 Order, the English would say, “We are really offended you have asked for our permission to have a conversation with yourselves. Don’t you know you are in a voluntary union? You decide what you want to do and once you have decided, inform us of your decision and we will honour it’. If you have to ask someone else’s permission to leave a voluntary union, you’re not in a voluntary union - you are a colony. The union isn’t voluntary today nor was it voluntary in 1707. In the early part of the 17th century Scotland was trading quite successfully with Africa and Asia but the English didn’t like it so they introduced the Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663, which effectively blockaded Scotland into submission, decreeing that Scotland could only trade internationally if it did so on English ships where 75% of the crew were English, which of course the Scots could not do. The Darien Scheme was just Scotland’s final death throes to establish overseas trading links, which they knew they had to do if they were to survive. The Scots had to ask England’s permission for the Darien Scheme and in fact the English contributed half the funds for the scheme then at the last minute withdrew them and then did everything they could to make sure the project failed, which of course it did. The English then bribed the Scottish nobility with ‘if you dissolve your parliament and come under English rule, we will reimburse the money you lost’, but when this didn’t work the English introduced the Aliens Act of 1705, which would have castrated the Scottish nobility. Even as the Act of Union was being signed the English had their army amassed in Ulster and on the Scottish border, and their navy anchored in the Firth of Forth off Edinburgh and the English Chancellor of the day famously said, ‘It’s union or war’. Hardly a voluntary union. The English nationalist myth that Scotland entered the union because it was bankrupt, is nothing more than that, a myth. In 1707 Scotland’s national debt was £160k, and if, given its larger population England’s debt had been commensurate with Scotland’s, they would have been in debt to the tune of about £800k, but they weren’t, England’s debt was £18m. It wasn’t Scotland that was bankrupt, it was England. Furthermore, if the ‘Scotland was bankrupt’ myth was true and there was any mention of debt in the Act of Union you would imagine it would be England telling Scotland not to worry about their debt as the kind English had it covered but in fact the only mention of debt in the Act of Union is England forcing Scotland to pay a share of England’s debt. So now the Scots not only came under English rule they did so for the privilege of paying off England’s debt. In Scotland the people are sovereign and given at the time of signing the Treaty of Union the people were rioting in opposition to coming under English rule it was clearly contrary to the wishes of the people of Scotland. In the first English parliament in 1707 after Scotland came under English rule, the Scots had 45 representatives and the English 486 and as Daniel Defoe, an English spy of the time, said, ‘The Scots will be allowed to send to Westminster, a handful of men who will make no weight whatever. They will be allowed to sit there for form’s sake to be laughed at’. The union was however a political union and never a territorial union, which is interesting because, even if you believe Westminster to be the British parliament (and not the English parliament, which it self-evidently is, unless you can’t count) there is nothing in the Treaty of Union that gives that parliament the right to as much as a blade of grass in Scotland. This, therefore, means that all the resources that have been extracted from Scotland in the name of the union (£1 trillion worth of oil and gas to start with) are in fact colonial plunder. In 2014 the question the people of Scotland were asked was, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ As this question was agreed by both sides of the argument presumably both parties agreed that Scotland wasn’t an independent country otherwise the question would have made no sense. As being an independent country means you are self-governing, if you are not independent it therefore means you are not self-governing and strangely enough the United Nation’s definition of a colony is a ‘non-self-governing territory’. Put in more straightforward terms; if you have a business that I want to take over and I say, “How about we amalgamate our businesses?” to which when you respond, “I don’t want to,” I take out a gun and put it against your head and saying, “How about now?” you sign up to the arrangement. Then in the new enterprise you get 45 shares and I get 486 and I then put a proposal to the Board of Directors (which is you and me) that you can only leave with the Board’s permission (the union’s equivalent of the constitution is reserved) and lo and behold the proposal is passed by 45 votes against to 486 votes for. Then, when, one day, you decided you want to leave, I say, “You can shut the F up and get back to your desk, you’ll leave when I tell you you’re leaving and it ain’t going to be anytime soon”, if you had any illusions you were in a partnership it has been dispelled, and if you were a country, you are what is commonly known as a colony.