Dissent – Bute House, Wednesday 25 January 2023

Scotland’s cause is not about what currency we use, or how our pensions are paid or whether we will be a few pounds richer or poorer. It is about how we think of ourselves, our communities and our nation.
It is about whether we see ourselves as being a nation at all. Or whether we see ourselves as merely a region within the British state.

A nation is its people. We are the people of Scotland. We are the nation of Scotland.

We are a nation not because others say that we are. We don’t need anybody else’s permission or acknowledgement to be a nation. We are a nation because we say we are.

What kind of nation are we? Obviously, that depends on what kind of people we are. Too often, nations are judged by the quality of the politicians who take it upon themselves to be the public ‘face’ of the nation.
Please! Please! Don’t let Scotland be judged on the quality of our politicians!

British Nationalists like to pretend that campaigners for Scotland’s cause are claiming some kind of “Scottish superiority”. They like to put about the notion that we are saying that people in Scotland have different, and somehow “better” attitudes than people in the rest of the UK. It’s all lies, of course.
All we claim is that there is a distinctive political culture in Scotland. Not unique. Not necessarily better. But different from the rest of the UK.

The British political elite finds this abhorrent. British Nationalists detest distinctiveness. They deplore the fact that we choose not to be just like them. They hate that we won’t stay in the box they’ve made for us.
Our own political elite, meanwhile, talks the talk of Scotland’s distinctiveness as a nation whilst dutifully walking the line laid down by the British state.

We want independence, not because we regard ourselves as superior, but because we refuse to accept that we are inferior.

We refuse to accept that we are less than the people of other nations who take their independence for granted.

If the kind of nation we are depends on the kind of people we are, what kind of people are we?
From all the world can tell by looking at our politicians, we are the kind of people who are meekly content to accept a subordinate status within a political union that was contrived in a different age for purposes that were never relevant to us.

A union that we, the people, had no part in creating or sanctioning. An anachronistic, dysfunctional, corrupt union which serves none of the people off these islands well. And serves Scotland only ill.

A union which was always intended to serve the purposes of the ruling elites. A union which, in that regard if no other, has not changed one iota in the last three centuries.

A union that sucks the human and material resources out of our nation and in return gives us government by parties that we have emphatically rejected at the polls.

A union that imposes policies which are anathema to the people of Scotland. Policies which have been rejected by the people of Scotland.

A union which will always make Scotland less than it might. And us less than we have a right to be.
This is what our politicians have been accepting on our behalf. Their acceptance of our subordinate status has defined us in the eyes of our neighbours, the world, aye! and ourselves.

The voice of dissent is the voice that says ENOUGH! NO MORE! We are NOT subordinate! We are NOT inferior! We are NOT less than the people of other nations and no longer will we allow the politicians to define us as such.

Scotland’s people are being treated with casual contempt by the British political elite while being played for fools by Scotland’s own political elite.

We, the people, are being crushed between an imperialist regime that is incorrigibly corrupt to the core and a colonial administration that is so intent on the screeching demands of an outlandish clique it long since stopped listening to the voice of the people.

It is time the people started pushing back!

It is time the voice of dissent grew so loud that it can no longer be dismissed by the British political elite and so insistent it cannot be ignored by Scotland’s own political elite.

We are the voice of dissent and we WILL be heard!

We are the people of Scotland, and we say YES!

We are the people, and we say NOW!