Bristibh bannan bhur cuinge (Break the cords of your bondage)
Editorial from 'The Thistle'
The great obstacle to reform in British legislation hitherto has been the House of Lords and the selfishness of the English Liberal party. For that reason Scotland has long suffered, and will continue to suffer from the denial of legislation in many matters most essential to the comfort and well-being of her people. The oppressive powers of the former have been limited but the selfishness of the Liberals - and the Tories, for in their treatment of the Scots they are inseparable – remains. Now, the head of the British Empire—he whose duty it is to hold the scales of justice even, as between the three kingdoms and the four peoples over whom he rules—England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales—has thought fit to sully his high position by taking part in the unjust aggressions of England against the people of Ireland. In such action he has violated the constitution of the United Kingdom, and has thus proved himself to be a creator of disaffection to his person, and even of disloyalty to the British throne.
Every true Scot must hail the political crisis thus engendered with the utmost satisfaction. The hypocrisy by which the Scots, who have at least doubly done their duty as builders of the British Empire, have found themselves checked and maltreated at every turn by their English fellow-subjects despite our Treaty rights and the solemnly pledged faith of the Parliament of England, has been exposed. A Constitutional Convention, convened to discuss the governance of the entire Kingdom fails to include any representative of the Scots or the Welsh peoples. And while this glaring measure of injustice is dealt out to the Scots – and the Welsh, not merely in the matter of national sentiment, but also in grossly material affairs, a very different policy is adopted by the English majority in the British Parliament towards the people of Ireland.
Scotland has to fight for years to get even her most urgent needs attended to, yet the demands of the Irish members of Parliament, in almost every question but the granting of Home Rule, are most obsequiously granted, whether the party in power be Liberal or Conservative. How then arises this difference of treatment? The answer is a sad one, but it is plain and undeniable. The brutal English majority in Parliament turns all but a deaf ear to the manifold requirements of Scotland, because the Scottish people are peaceful and law-abiding—but it truckles to the remonstrances and complaints—civil and religious—of the Irish people, because they resort to violent means if their demands are refused. The inference then is obvious and inevitable. That the English people have to be, so to speak, kicked into fair play if the exercise of fair play in the slightest degree interferes with their national interest or their national vanity. They are quite ready—indeed go out of their way —to back up and cry out for justice to the Poles and fair play to the Danes, the Finns, the Slovaks or to any of the minor and oppressed peoples under the sun so long as it is safe to do so. But when justice and fair play are demanded in the British Parliament for the Scots and the Welsh it is found that a deaf ear is turned to the demands of these two peoples because they are law-abiding, while the two political parties, which are controlled by and give the full voice of Englishmen—the Conservatives and the Liberals—tumble over each other in endeavouring to meet the demands of the turbulent and unruly Irish members. In other words, the policy of the English people is the policy of the bully, which only yields to fear.
It is well then that the Scottish democracy should realise the facts of the political situation, and act accordingly. Scotland should refuse any longer to be dragged at the heels of the two English political parties. We have for the first time a Member of Parliament pledged to securing the independence of the Scots Nation but it is now time for a Scottish party, a party devoted only to the furtherance of the interests of Scotland and the Scots. Let that Party forge alliances with the Irish and Welsh parties in Parliament, let there be a Celtic League, bringing together, for the sole purpose of compelling England to do justice, the minor nationalities of Britain. Hitherto England has acted the part of a big political bully, who has taken advantage of his brutal majority to over-ride the reasonable wants and wishes of Scotland and Wales. And when she has yielded to Ireland, as in the case of the land question, she has only done so through fear. At present we do not have popular government. We have only government by a privileged class. And it is only when that class becomes afraid—not when it becomes convinced— that it yields to popular pressure. Must we establish terrorism as a leading feature of the British Constitution? Or will the English, at last, see sense? Against a united front of all Celts, the English usurper cannot stand. Let England see what she will have to reckon with and she may at last begin to treat Scotland with respect and with justice.
We must break the cords of our bondage.