Scots go to a battle today to win their freedom.
Thu Sep 18, 2014 11:34AM GMT
Scots go to a battle today to win their freedom. Generations of Scottish people have waited for this day. Nearly three years ago, Scottish nationalists won the right to finally have a referendum to vote on their country's independence from London.
But the right to freedom for the Scots has been an historic battle going back more than eight centuries to break from the dominance of English rulers.
Arrayed against Scots is a formidable army of opponents. The British monarch, the Bank of England, all of the Westminster political establishment, the oil companies, the London-centered, biased media, and even British military intelligence and its allies in Washington and NATO.
Former MI6 head Sir John Scarlett came out recently citing terrorist fears facing an independent Scotland if it should break the 307-year-old Union with London. And US President Barack Obama has also presumed to lecture the Scots on the "benefits" of fealty to "Great Britain".
The No campaign has relied on a mixture of fear mongering and bribery to deter the Scots from voting Yes today. The last-ditch bribery attempts have promised the Scots extra public funding and devolution powers.
Prominent among the bribers are Scottish pro-Union politicians like former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who vow that the Scots will gain more freedom if they just vote No and stay within the United Kingdom. What these jesters don't realize is that their condescending last-minute offers remind many Scots of the real freedoms that they have been denied all along.
This has unmistakable echoes from the past. The English rulers always undermined Scottish freedom by inveigling Scots with inducements of titles and land estates. Sadly, some Scots were bought off with the English shilling to forfeit freedom for themselves and their people. And then only to realize that the inducements and baubles were mere trifles for a select few, while painfully illusory for the rest.
Claims of North Sea oil running out, banks and businesses relocating from Scotland to England, pension funds collapsing, future financial currency woes and blocked access to European Union markets - are just some of the scare stories that the anti-independence army has flagged up in recent weeks.
The trouble with the No campaign is that it seems to be all based on negative warnings. What is there that is positive about Scotland remaining within the UK? The naysayers seem to think that everything can be reduced down to mundane questions of money and
penny-pinching self-interest.
The trouble with the No campaign is that it seems to be all based on negative warnings. What is there that is positive about Scotland remaining within the UK? The naysayers seem to think that everything can be reduced down to mundane questions of money and
penny-pinching self-interest.
Freedom is about much, much more. It is about the right for people to determine their own destiny - politically, economically, culturally and spiritually. Scots are voting Yes not just to avail of their economic resources, for better public services and finances, and a fairer society.
It's about the fundamental right to govern for themselves, in a way that the Scottish people see fit for their own democratically decided needs, not as handed down to them like scraps thrown from a table by aloof rulers residing in London.
It's about the fundamental right to govern for themselves, in a way that the Scottish people see fit for their own democratically decided needs, not as handed down to them like scraps thrown from a table by aloof rulers residing in London.
Scotland is endowed with many natural resources. It's not just about the still-remaining abundant oil reserves under the North Sea – the largest known reserves in the whole of Europe. The Scots have a rich history of industriousness and intellectual ingenuity, and a prodigious capacity for commerce, science, the arts, new technologies and innovation.
They have the right to develop their own indisputable talents without the interference of a London-based elite that has all-too often treated Scotland as a fettered cash cow. North Sea oil is a real, precious resource; and it is also deeply symbolic of much more.
For more than four decades, the London government has milked billions-of-dollars-worth of oil for its own partial gain, tax-cuts for the rich and funding of imperialist wars, while Scotland has been deprived of its indigenous natural wealth. No wonder Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum are against Scottish independence, just as they are/were against people's independence in every other country, including Iran.
For many Scots the Union with England is a tawdry euphemism for one-way exploitation of Scotland and its five million population. As with other parts of that Union - incorporating Ireland and Wales – the central government in London has used the so-called United Kingdom as a lordly device to subjugate those nations and to deprive them of their right to self-determination, to govern their own societies and resources as they see fit to meet their needs.
But, above all the natural resources of Scotland, it is perhaps the historic Scottish heart for freedom and independence that is most redoubtable. That force is stronger than any army.
Scotland's cry for freedom is shared by many other freedom-loving people around the world: in Africa, Palestine, Syria, Ukraine, Catalonia, Ireland, Bahrain, Iran, even we should say the mass of ordinary, common people in the United States of America and England. It is the call for freedom from elitist, foreign powers that want to impose their destructive vision of austerity and warmongering on the majority, and to deny the majority the right to live in peace, harmony and prosperity under their own self-determined governance.
Scottish freedom is not about a parochial, isolated nationalism. It is about a universal right to democratic freedom, where the majority of common people take control of their future, free from exploitation and oppression under a privileged class system.
William Wallace, the Scottish hero who inspired his fellow-Scots to fight for their freedom in the early 14th Century, was eventually hung, drawn and quartered - martyred - in London for daring to speak truth to power. Wallace did not bow down to the despotic, illegitimate would-be rulers of his day because he saw it as his birthright to live as a free human being. Not just his right, everyone's right. We owe it to Wallace and the countless other martyrs down through history and around the world to continue striking a blow for freedom.
Scotland has the chance to strike that blow again today. If it succeeds, there will, for sure, be more challenges tomorrow and the days after tomorrow. But such freedom begins in the eternal now.
As the great Scottish poet Robbie Burns once wrote: 'My love is like a red, red rose that's newly sprung in June; my heart is like a melody that sweetly plays its tune.'
That sweet melody is the sound of human freedom calling.
So, Scotland the Brave, strike hard, strike true; for the good people of the world stand with you.
FC/AB
FC/AB
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now located in East Africa as a freelance journalist, where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring, based on eyewitness experience working in the Persian Gulf as an editor of a business magazine and subsequently as a freelance news correspondent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation. More articles by Finian Cunningham
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