Letters: Sovereignty, nationalism and Salmond

Published on Friday 29 April 2011 16:49

Joyce McMillan and Professor Christopher Harvie (29 April) would appear to be at one in their interpretation of the election campaign being waged by the SNP.

Since her conversion to the Salmond camp, Joyce McMillan has been at some pains to justify the move, pointing out that Salmond's SNP has also moved; in their case the move has taken them some distance from the original model which not only stood for independence in principle but actually campaigned to bring it about.

It is this shift, and the lack of pursuit of independence on the part of Salmond's SNP, that has provoked criticism from the "fundamental wing" of the SNP.

The criticism is all the more telling. Joyce McMillan justifies the shift by Salmond's SNP on the grounds that: "There is the simple truth that in the 21st century world we now inhabit, national sovereignty is always qualified by other considerations, and no longer matters nearly as much as it did 80 years ago."

Ms McMillan could not be more wrong but it has taken both her and Professor Harvie some time to catch up with what has been happening to the SNP ever since Alex Salmond took over the leadership in September 1990.

When I left the SNP in December 1990, it was because of the party's willingness to surrender sovereignty to the EEC, and I forecast that under Salmond, the SNP would eventually occupy its current position and become a party that would settle for some form of devolution, within the UK.

Sovereignty is not simply an abstract concept, it has practical applications. A claim to sovereignty is a claim by some representative authority in the name of the people to exercise a monopoly of law-making and law enforcement in a designated territory.

In an increasingly interdependent world, sovereign states have accepted specific treaty limitations on their law-making rights. But the European Union goes further by requiring member states to cede a general right of law-making on a permanent basis, to EU institutions.

Sovereignty is a legal as well as a philosophical way of describing the right of a people to govern itself, to determine its own priorities within the constraints imposed by its external environment.

Increased interdependence may change the balance of advantage and disadvantage in any "self-determined" act, but it cannot make the principle of self-determination or self-government superfluous.

At any level of integration or interdependence, a community of people must ask itself how important it is to retain the right to make its own choices between the options with which it is faced.

One of the most telling arguments being used against independence, an argument that Salmond's SNP seems to be totally incapable of addressing, is the failure of RBS and Bank of Scotland.

Yet, it is a non-argument and a perfect example of two nominally Scottish companies, operating in the "global world" over which Scotland exercised almost no control or sovereignty.Had control actually been vested in an independent Scotland, would the outcome have been the same?

The failure of RBS and Bank of Scotland is one of the best arguments for Scottish independence.

Jim Fairlie

Heathcote Road, Crieff

CONTRARY to The Scotsman's front-page headline, your interpretation of my remarks is far adrift from reality. Alex Salmond is a great friend and confidant who has energised Scottish politics. I am unlikely ever to forget his first approach to me, 23 years ago, to do a broadcast: "We had the choice of Sean Connery or you. We chose you."

Alex has always been approachable and tolerant, and I am glad to have had Holyrood and the SNP as a stage on which to voice my experience and opinions.

Despite your equally imaginative assertions about how I feel, I am fully involved in securing a victory for the SNP in what has proved to be a remarkable campaign.

Alex Salmond is a class act and the only real choice for Scotland's First Minister. Re-electing him will give Scotland's people a fighting chance in difficult times.

(Prof) Christopher Harvie

High Cross Avenue

Melrose