The evil
excuse for the massacre of Glenoce was a six day delay in the
swearing of an oath to monarchy, which monarch subsequently signed
the massacre order for two companies of the Argyll regiment to
genocide the Macdonald clan. If you look in the phonebook you can
conclude they didn't quite follow orders, though it was terrible
enough.
I share
James Keir Hardie's opinions on the subject of monarchy and the
puerile nature of it. It reinforces and is at the apogee of a
decrepit feudal political and class system. It is populated by
nameless officials who speak as if they are buildings 'the palace
says', 'Clarence House denies'. It is secretive and has recently
been made more exempt from Freedom of Information laws so that if it
again asked for money from the State Poverty Fund which is set aside
for schools, hospitals and low income families, as it did when Labour
were in power, we would not now be able to discover this, nor what
the answer would now be to this incredible example of the monarchy's
sense of entitlement to any and all public money. I suppose that's
what absorbing £200 million plus every year of public money does to
you. Westminster has overseen a deal which allows the piracy of
national asset revenue direct to the institution of monarchy and
refused Holyrood control of Scotland's part. If monarchy was free it
would still be a poison. Its message is that everyone except this
one family are common lownesses. Nothing infuriates me more than
switching on the news and having the spectacle of a member of this
one family as the remnants of Hanoverian monarchy trailed out in some
imbecilic non news story. The BBC particularly went completely
insane over the jubilee and prior to that the society wedding of
William Wales and Kate Middleton - they had five times more staff
working on it than other channels and have refused to disclose how
much, of our, money they spent on coverage. There were still items
such as on the cake being shown on breakfast TV nine months after it
happened. And him in that redcoat uniform...
Can
anyone remember what happened just a few days after “The wedding to
bring the whole nation together”? ? I'll tell you. Scotland
voted in a landslide for a party whose stated aim is to pull this
whole bloody awful set up apart. Not long after that was the moment
when a little spark of hope lit in my heart and I had a sea change on
independence. The real possibility suddenly hoving into view of
Scotland escaping the fossilised behemoth of Westminster and it's
only a hop, step and a 'carravooltchin' to a much fairer, healthier
society and so many things which seemed difficult are suddenly within
our grasp. A yes we can moment where people dare to dream things
they never thought they'd see, where anything is possible.
Soon
after the swearing in at Holyrood Alex Salmond was on my TV assuring
us that Elizabeth Windsor would remain head of state in an
independent Scotland. Mary McCabe who wrote, proposed and got
accepted at the '97 SNP Conference the motion that there should be a
referendum on the monarchy within the first term of an independent
Scottish Parliament now states that retaining the monarchy meantime
is about putting as few hurdles as possible in the way of the future
negotiations about independence and says 'there are people in the
British establishment prepared to go to the wire over the issue of
the monarchy'. I say exactly who are these people in the British
establishment? What do you mean by 'go to the wire'? The people
should be told the truth. If you're frightened of them, tell us. I
did wonder if I saw fear in Alex Salmond's eyes.
Keir
Hardie said people's heads were turned by Westminster “the best
men's club in Europe” and often “forgot why they were there and
who put them there”. That is as true now as it was when he made
the observation. It really hasn't changed much at all. Over a
hundred years after an Act was passed decreeing the House of Lords
would be determined by popular mandate, this has yet again failed to
materialise. The precedents, habits and traditions of the way
Westminster conducts itself are maintained as if it were a political
museum. I really wish it was. The power at Westminster comes from
the Crown in Parliament and the royal prerogative powers placed with
the Prime Minister and Privy Council. These are not democratic
powers, they're autocratic and monarchic and they are not relative to
the electoral mandate gained or as in the current situation, not
gained, at the ballot box. The power available to whomsoever
manoeuvres into Number 10 is unaccountable and corrupting. Currently
we have King Dave and he alone can decide to do a U-turn, or not, to
have a yacht, or not, to alone bring in a policy when no-one else in
the cabinet agrees with it, as he did recently with minimum alcohol
pricing for England and Wales. The royal prerogative powers are
wielded to suit, for instance were extended to expel the Chagos
islanders in 1962. This was deemed unlawful by the High Court in
2000 so the Labour government used royal prerogative power to issue
an Order in Council to achieve the same effect and won their appeal
in the Lords after this was also found unlawful. The royal
prerogative powers enable writing of law, going to war etc without
reference to parliament. It is supposed to be constrained by
constitutional convention but as we have no written constitution the
conventions have been described as “whatever the government wants
them to be”. It's a right royal stitch up of the people, who are
not being properly represented and are not in any kind of proper
control of government. 'The power to make great changes' may be
deeply desired by people with altruistic motives, but also by those
with completely avaricious ones. It's far too arbitrary. The people
still have all the power of a hereditary establishment against them –
Cameron, Osborne and Johnson are all from families who were in the
same kind of position hundreds of years ago. That is neither natural
nor healthy.
In the
game of Westminster power-grab it is 80 or so seats in what is termed
'Middle England' which hold the keys to the castle, these are the
voters yenned for and courted with policies, image and rhetoric. The
bare-faced cheek and mummery of Ed Miliband one day in Glasgow
referencing Hardie to promote Scottish Labour and then a day or so
later issuing a fawning congratulations to monarchy for being in an
unelected position propping up this rotten system for 60 inglorious
years.
During
the passage of the Scotland Bill at Westminster, Labour MP Dennis
Canavan tried to get the requirement for an oath at the Scottish
Parliament replaced with an affirmation “I do hereby acknowledge
the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of
Government best suited to their needs, and, do hereby declare and
pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests
shall be paramount.” Westminster did not pass it. Rejected as a
Holyrood candidate by New Labour despite 97% support from his local
party, he stood as an Independent Labour candidate and was expelled
from the party. He got the biggest majorities in the Scottish
Parliament both times he stood. He now supports the Yes campaign.
He is the kind of Scottish Labour party we want and need, now.
The SNP I
know contains some honourable and good people but some of us could
never join a party identifying as 'nationalist' as we feel, and
Scotland is really, internationalist. I also do not trust the
leadership of the SNP who seem happy to fudge issues and allow
misconceptions to go unchallenged, primarily that they can decree now
what will be so in an independent Scotland. The SNP will most likely
crumble in independent Scotland, there will certainly be splitting
off and if they called themselves the Scottish Independence Party and
declared the truth, that they are not likely to be in the same
popular position ever again as they are in this period of advancing
towards independence, but they are happy and willing to fall on their
swords for the greater goal, they would be unanswerable. This may be
difficult for those who have stalked the corridors of Westminster's
unaccountable power and centuries of very old money, but if they want
a place of real note in history they should bite the bullet, and
certainly forget about trying to inveigle any royal prerogative
powers into independent Scotland.
The
current rump Scottish Labour Party leadership bemoan that the SNP
leadership have Scotland on pause while they play games, but the
situation with the Westminster political system, which is hung
together on a dodgy deal done with monarchy centuries ago, is that it
effectively has democracy on pause and has done for quite some time,
for people all over these islands. We can do better than that and
our move may be the catalyst for change in other countries too.
If we let
the people speak they will, but we have to give them the choice to
choose. Currently on the monarchy the SNP and Labour offer no
difference – the Jubilee debate saw republican after republican in
the SNP getting up in the chamber at Holyrood to make fawning
comments on monarchy. The party of Keir Hardie were the same. Why
do they do that? What are they afraid of or who are they trying to
play games with – is it the institution of monarchy, or the people
of Scotland?
We should
lay our cards on the table. Set a clear agenda which sets out the
removal of this anachronism. Offer the Windsors citizenship in an
independent Scotland and the human rights to vote, stand for election
and determine their own destiny. If they don't like that, Hell mend
them and cheerio to them.
If we
make a party which offers the people what they actually really do
want, they will go for it. Stop trying to hoodwink and second-guess
the public. Tell them the truth and let them choose, that's what
this is all about after all.
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