Power is Never Given

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By Jason Michael

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME before we reached these our Gates of Hercules; the pillars at the end of our political world, beyond which we may pass no further – unless, that is, we are willing to be transformed. Scotland will not be given another referendum. If we are to be free, our freedom will have to be taken with our own hands, according to our own rules, from the clutches of those who hold us and who are unwilling to let us go.

The referendum we were granted in 2014 was an anomaly. We would never have been given the opportunity to vote on independence if those in power in Westminster thought for a single moment that we would elect to leave. They were banking on our defeat, and they expected a defeat so humiliating, so utter and comprehensive it would, in a single blow, send our smouldering hope flying off into the abyss of history and ancient and half-remembered lore. But we took up that gauntlet and we bloodied their nose. Our defeat then was the pallid victory of the swindler, and as such it became the vindication of our highest aspiration. From the ashes of 2014 arose a flaming bird, a movement for independence and change that has shaken Britain to its foundations.

Triumph can now be the only outcome of another referendum and so no other referendum will be given. Knowing the certainty of its destruction in another vote the British state will now move heaven and earth to ensure we are not offered such an opportunity again. So long as we remain in this sea – where Britannia rules the waves, playing by the rules written by the masters of the union, the gates to the oceans of freedom will stay tightly shut. Power will not be given to Scotland.

Sisters and brothers – the most wonderful people I know, we are on a voyage and we are going to cross over into the waters of freedom, and we are going to do this soon and we are going to do this together. We are going to set an adamant course with such steel and determination that we will crash through those gates at such a rate of knots that they will be pulverised and shattered into smithereens under our steam. But to do this we must first change the rules. Power is never given. It can only be taken. We are going to take power.

Independence is not an event that will make us free. Rather we must first realise our freedom before we are worthy of the independence we seek. Independence is merely the acknowledgement of the independence we have already claimed. So now that we have reached the furthest limits of what we can achieve as a movement within the United Kingdom the time is upon us to realise that we are indeed free, and no liberated nation bends to the will of another. Independence-becoming, as a political reality in the making, demands that London’s rules no longer apply to us.

If we cannot accept this, if this antinomianism terrifies us, then we have ourselves denied to us our right to be free. We will remain in chains of our own making.

Whose needs are served at Westminster? Not Scotland’s! Our interests are unimportant in London, and this has always and will always be the case. Scots parliamentarians win benefit for Scots only on those most rare of occasions when their objectives match those of a significant number of their English equivalents. The inverse is never true. What then can we say of Westminster – the “mother of all parliaments?” This is England’s parliament; the place where England rules Greater England – of which Scotland is a part and not a partner. Westminster is a mother alright, she is our wicked stepmother. London is foreign to us.

How then do we leave? By the front door! Ian Blackford showed us how to do this when he led the members of Scottish National Party out of the Commons. The pity, of course, is that he led them back again. But when our MPs walked out we all felt the same – we were lifted up from our knees. For an entire day we were shot of Westminster and London rule. We can have that again when we accept the simple truth that we can walk out whenever we chose – and never go back.

At a time of our choosing we can express the sovereign will of the Scots in a referendum. We need no permission. London will call it illegal – and it will, but Scotland was never extinguished by the treason of union, and “for as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule.” Insofar as we entered into union with England as a sovereign and free people, we can depart such a union when we determine the time to be right.

That time is upon us. We have never been less than a free people. But now when England tells us we are no longer free, but subservient to its foreign notion of sovereignty in the Crown – its crown, then we know the time to go is now. There are still those who’ll tell us to wait for the “perfect time,” but – as at all times – there is no perfect time. All we have is the right time, and the right time is the very moment we decide to make it the right time. Let us make that decision now before it is too late and make now the right time. Let us bring our MPs home, let us have our referendum, and let us be the arbiters of our own regulations and our own democracy.

A Charaidean, right now a storm is coming and we all know this to be true. Our ship is rigged and ready to sail. The seas before us are calm and make for good sailing. Our destination is nothing short of the Destiny of Scotland, a destiny written for us – us here and now – long before this knotted union was foisted upon us. Scots bled and fled and shivered and starved to preserve those antique words of Promise that we would not have to. All that is required of us is that we weigh anchor and leave. My beautiful friends, my dearly loved Scottish sisters and brother, let us go. Let us go in peace.

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