Scotland: the 54th Parallel DMZ – 2069

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By Jason Michael

Half a century after the defeat of England in the War of the Last Hurrah the people of Scotland still live in hope that the secretive and isolationist state to the south will open up and re-join the international community of nations. It may have a long wait.

Fifty years ago today the once mighty island kingdom of Great Britain was divided along the 54^th parallel, separating the Republic of Scotland from the People’s Glorious Kingdom of England following the 2018-19 War of the Last Hurrah. After the reunification of Ireland and the rapid secession of Gibraltar and the Channel Islands from the former United Kingdom in mid-August 2018 Downing Street, fearing the loss of its North Sea oil resources, ordered martial law in Scotland – suspending its democracy and devolved parliament three days before the country’s second independence referendum.

On Friday 17 August Nicola Sturgeon, president of the provisional Scottish government in exile, declared the independence of the Scottish Republic with the support of the German Federal Government. Under emergency legislation the European Union recognised the sovereignty of the new republic, declaring it a “Special EU Protectorate pending accession.”

Hostilities broke out in parts of Scotland and all over northern England the next day, a conflict which soon developed into the War of the Last Hurrah. A combined EU task force of French, Spanish, and Italian naval units blockaded English ports, protected by air support and German and Polish ground units. In early January – largely due to the UN sanctions and its suspension from the North Atlantic Alliance – England was forced to capitulate and accept Europe’s terms. The US support on which the London regime was banking was not forthcoming, with President Pence merely tweeting the supportive words,

Thoughts and prayers.

In accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Saint Helier the border of Scotland was shifted south from its historic location on the river Tweed to the 54^th line of latitude* to include those parts of northern England where the people had signed the online “take us with you” petition. Since the peace treaty of 2019 the 54^th Parallel has been a tense demilitarised zone, with Scotland to the north and an increasingly isolated PGKE to the south. Over these past 50 years, especially once King William V signed the 2022 alliance with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, refugees from Wales – the “Gogleddwr and Hwntw boat people” – have been arriving on the east coast of Ireland in their droves.

Formal suppression of thinking – under the 2020 Intellectuals and Pesky Human Rights Lawyers Act – has meant that academics, legal professionals, and other people caught wearing spectacles have been forced into indentured servitude, primarily replacing European migrant labour in the fruit picking industry. Educated defectors are now less common. It has been forty-two years since the last school was closed down.

Still very much a pariah state, the PGKE continues to test missiles off the coast of the Netherlands – with the V-Brexit 6.2 and the V-Brexit 6.5 widely thought to be nuclear capable. Efforts have been made over the years to convince North Korea to play a more active role in helping to persuade its European ally to moderate its behaviour, but the result is always the same – the same cryptic dispatch from the Palace: “Sod of bruv, were indapendant nah – innit!”

Scotland, now the USE’s third most prosperous economy, still hopes for a normalisation of diplomatic relations with its southern neighbour. Its thirty-six year old The Kettle’s On project – an initiative encouraging defectors and refugees from the PGKE to settle in Scotland – is still in operation and run from the Davidson Institute in Glasgow, an organisation named in memory of the only Scottish person known to have crossed south over the DMZ. Fifty years on from the division of the island the 54^th Parallel remains the only such divisive boundary in the world, a sorry reminder of the folly of narrow and xenophobic politics.

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London on the eve of the War of the Last Hurrah

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