Oath of Allegiance campaign

 

We have recently contacted Scottish ministers pressing that the Oath of Allegiance to Elizabeth I and her heirs and successors, sworn by MSPs prior to taking their seats at Holyrood as representatives of the people, be made voluntary rather than compulsory as soon as possible. As many MSPs and the First Minister state prior to taking the oath, their primary allegiance is to the Scottish people. We believe the oath sworn should refect that truth and an alternative oath should be drafted.

We’re asking that people contact their MSPs and press them politely on this issue. You can find out who your MSPs are here Find your MSPs  Currently some MSPs are members of Republic Scotland yet the first thing they must now do in a democratic Parliament to which they have been elected as representatives of the people is swear an oath they do not mean. That is a blight on the bud of Scottish democracy and must end.

We are calling for this now as the 320 year anniversary of the Glencoe massacre is on February 13th this year and this revolved around the clan Chief, MacIain, having been six days late in swearing an oath of allegiance to the king.

That day 13th February 1692 two companies of the Argyll regiment of the British Army were given an order signed by the king to massacre Scottish children in Glencoe. It was the orginal plan of the Secretrary of State, James Dalrymple Master of Stair who played a crucial role in the subsequent 1707 Treaty of Union, that all the clans be destroyed. ‘I hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with prisoners’ reads his letter to that effect. But they only had the excuse for the Macdonalds - the Chief had to make his way through blizzards and was an old man. He went to Inverlochy (renamed 'Fort William') and was told he had to sign at Inverary. But Glencoe was a public relations disaster as the soldiers had been guests of the Macdonalds for nearly two weeks prior to the massacre, unaware of the order to come, so the act was ‘murder under trust’. Of course they could not carry out their orders to the letter which were to ‘put all to the sword under seventy’that they ‘be cut off root and branch’and that MacIain’s ‘sons do upon no account escape your hands’. They used guns which alerted the whole glen. Many escaped including the Chief’s sons but 39 were murdered and died horribly including women and children and about the same number perished in the snow trying to flee.

The order is in the national Library of Scotland. (transcript below)

‘Sir,

You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the Macdonalds of Glencoe, and to put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care that the old fox and his sons do upon no account escape your hands. You are to secure all the avenues that no man escape. This you are to put into execution at five of the clock precisely; and by that time, or very shortly after it, I'll strive to be at you with a stronger party. If I do not come to you at five, you are not to tarry for me, but to fall on. This is by the King's special command, for the good and safety of the country, that these miscreants be cut off root and branch. See that this be put in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be dealt with as one not true to King nor Government, nor a man fit to carry Commission in the King's service. Expecting you will not fail in the fulfilling hereof, as you love yourself, I subscribe these with my hand at Ballachulish.

Feb 12, 1692

Robert Duncanson

For His Majesty's Service,

to Captain

Robert Campbell

of Glenlyon’

We say there should now be no forced oath of allegiance.  What kind of future do we want for Scotland?  Should it be one of reason, rights and common sense or should the first thing in the Parliament be a forced oppressive oath redolent of a tyranny that should be over?

This parcel of war criminals

 

Today's Scotsman contains an article which references the Master of Stair 'this most expert and effective advocate of the Union ' and orchestrator of it in 1707 who dropped dead a few days later after his drivel and iniquity. For some reason it fails to mention that for which he is even more infamous – he was one of the king's Scottish ministers found responsible by the inquiry into the order 'by the King's special command' in London to two companies of the Argyll regiment of the British army to massacre Scottish children at Glencoe. The king having signed the order shielded Stair from any punishment other than being dismissed from the Secretaryship of State. Of course the king slunk away unpunished.

Not just a parcel of rogues then, orchestrators of 'murder under trust', completely morally bankrupt, evil men.

And we're told there will be a king Charles and another king William. Really? 

Of course we have a king now, he's called David Cameron and he might have the tiniest of little minorities and have had to cook up a connivance with the LibDems but that's irrelevant once he is in Number 10 as then he has his shiny mitts on the royal prerogative and he now has more power in the confines of this country than Barack Obama has in America. He can take the country to war, write law, decree yachts, on his whim it stands. If there were a queen there she could do the same, and if there were a democratically elected governing body in the same city as she was, like say for instance a Greater London Council and she didn't like who the people of London had voted in she could simply say "I abolish you" and that would be that. And that's exactly what she did.  The royal prerogative might not actually be used to do things in every case but it can be used by the PM and by the Privy Council and lies behind the great power Prime Ministers have to see that their will is done.

So people of Scotland have given Alex Salmond an amazing democratic majority and David Cameron is coming at him with the autocratic, unaccountable, corrupting, dangerous, tyrannical, fundamentally evil power of a king. Westminster is a creaking ancient mess and so is the unwritten constitution full of pointless precedents and traditions, only those in the government have any power to do things and Cameron trumps all else. Half the government is unelected and so is the head of state. So quaint in a 21st century 'democracy' don't you find? So sick. Speaker John Bercow said to Paul Flynn MP when the latter was attempting to criticise Andrew Windsor's errors in judgement and boorish behaviour when representing the country as Trade Ambassador: "References to members of the Royal Family should be very rare, very sparing and very respectful. We have to be very careful in our handling of these matters."  How crawling.  How ridiculous. And the Speaker is all about the rules.

Scotland has a chance to escape this, to move into a new landscape where the people truly govern themselves. Only this will deactivate the SNP vast coalition with its one over-riding aim of independence, only then will Scottish politics breathe and move on. If we wait for more of the so benevolent 'giving' of powers that Cameron tries to kid us with as he 'gives' legal power (I give you the power to reform the cobweb-ridden half-baked joke that anachronistic Westminster 'democracy' is Cameron, get on with it, but you'd better be quick), where are the Crown estate and renewable energy powers Alex Salmond asked for with his huge mandate from the Scottish people?

Cameron and Westminster will give absolutely sweet FA powers to the people of Scotland, or England or anywhere else unless it's cooked up to the Westminster system's benefit. We must take those powers for ourselves. Absolutely all the way. Wake up, peoples of Britain.

'Born from Evil

the union, Jack
the butcher's apron'