Breaking Narrative Control... ssalyers.substack.com/p/breaking-nar…
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Liberation Scotland Committee retweeted
5/ For those paying attention, the adoption of the UKGov's 60% mantra by SNP affiliated talking heads is part of an attack on @LiberationScot and @ScotSalvo
Why anyone would feel the need to do this is not entirely clear. Perhaps Alf Baird explained it during the National debate;
"post-colonial theory tells us is the dominant national party, it takes a different direction. It takes the people up blind alleys. It lacks innovation on the key objective, the most urgent matter, which is freeing the people. It lacks any incentive to do that. It becomes part of the racket. It is brought under the wing of colonialism.
"It just becomes, as some people have observed, an independence industry where people are earning money out of this industry, but they're never going to deliver any liberation. Fundamentally, they don't understand what independence means."
Why anyone would feel the need to do this is not entirely clear. Perhaps Alf Baird explained it during the National debate;
"post-colonial theory tells us is the dominant national party, it takes a different direction. It takes the people up blind alleys. It lacks innovation on the key objective, the most urgent matter, which is freeing the people. It lacks any incentive to do that. It becomes part of the racket. It is brought under the wing of colonialism.
"It just becomes, as some people have observed, an independence industry where people are earning money out of this industry, but they're never going to deliver any liberation. Fundamentally, they don't understand what independence means."
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This 60% figure (actually 2/3rds of native born Scots) is starting to be bandied about freely in nationalist circles as a credible/desirable criterion for independence. How that has come about is anyone's guess. On top is a contempt for popular action outside of party outside of SNP control and influence. Even to the extraordinary point of an MI6 slur aimed at us recently. The whole movement needs a rethink.
In 1950 Westminster itself admitted it was "aware of the support which this document has received". Seventy-six years on, that support is being called "absolutely FA", here, in defence of a man who went on camera at the SNP conference and likened the unpaid volunteers of Salvo and Liberation to an MI6 project.
"Don't be silly" was the defence offered. So let's study the record instead of brushing off with just a sneer.
Two million Scots signed the Covenant between 1949 and 1951, in a country of five million. Here is what Westminster did with them.
First it refused to count them. In May 1950, with the Covenant at a million and a quarter names, the Lords were asked for a plebiscite on the Voters' Roll to settle it. The response: the issues were "much too complicated to be dealt with by way of a plebiscite" (Hansard, HL Deb 17 May 1950, vol 167, c380WA).
Then it moved the goalposts. In July 1950, Attlee's ministers wrote to the Covenant Committee that the question could not be dealt with by a plebiscite, and that constitutional change is "considered and settled by the normal process of Parliamentary democracy" (The Scotsman, 31 July 1950).
Read that again. Scots had shown their will by signature, so signatures no longer counted. They asked for a vote of their own to prove it, so a vote was ruled out.
The only forum offered was Westminster itself, where Scotland held 71 seats of 625.
Scotland's will was moved onto a franchise where Scots could never be the majority. That was done in 1950, in writing, while the names were still coming in.
1979 was the same move again. The vote finally came, Scotland voted Yes, and a 40% rule written into the Act beforehand set the result aside.
Now we are told nothing happens until 60% in the polls. Every time Scots meet the test, the test moves, because every one of these was addressed to Westminster, and Westminster marks its own homework.
The Covenant did not fail. It was binned by the people it was addressed to, and anyone who calls that "achieving FA" is blaming two million Scots for Westminster's contempt.
Sixty per cent is a fairy-tale figure. Nobody in Westminster has ever said what happens when it is reached, and the record above tells you what would. Anyone still sending Scots to chase a number set by the people who move the number is doing Westminster's work for it, paid or unpaid.
Estonia did it the other way round. From 1989, volunteers registered 790,000 citizens on their own register, addressed to no one, and elected a congress from it. The referendum and the recognition followed.
The will of Scots was shown in 1951. What was missing was a record the people hold themselves. Unpaid volunteers are doing this the right way, which is why they are the ones being smeared
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Liberation Scotland Committee retweeted
Many of us know the many countries the British Empire colonised yet none of those countries had nearly as many Military camps mapped over 400 British Army camps (and more than 650 total military cantonments, including barracks and fortified posts) across Scotland in the decade following the Battle of Culloden (1746–yet the SNP do not support the fact that Scotland is a colony?
If there is one thing every Scot should do is take the time to read this. Chris has broken down in easy readable chunks just how Scotland is a colony of England, UN steps past & present & how we meet the criteria set out. Bookmark this, Scotlands history past, present & future 🏴
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What is the biggest barrier to SNP leaders getting behind the effort to have examined internationally Scotland's never-ceded sovereignty against the UK claim to a 'voluntary partnership' sealed, it says, by the Union, and imperiously imposes the right to direct and control Scotland's future? Isn't this an obvious step, when the UK is blocking at all turns the will of the Scottish nation, expressed so many times in elections? Sara Sayers answers. 👇
Sadly, no. I fear that there is a strong incentive to dismiss what we are doing because of the fear of the question, ‘why were you not doing this before now?’ There’s something difficult about the taking on an implication that you might have got something wrong or even just missed something obvious. There’s also that obvious response that it just can’t be possible that so many people missed something in plain sight fo so long. So we just have to carry on until the route proves itself and we have the level of support you describe!
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Liberation Scotland Committee retweeted
I can guarantee 100% because it has told us that Spain knows that Scotland is an annexed state and not a region. Spain has been informed by very important law figures. It fears Scotland's independence could be seen as something similar to the Catalonia case but it knows it's not. In no case cae a case of separatism. The English colonial state wants to make it look like it is but it's not. How can a sovereign state older than England be separatist. It makes no sense. The so-called UK is just based on a colonial treaty that was never implemented. It's just annexation. Scotland is a centuries old sovereign state which is illegally annexed and occupied by the English colonial state. It's an English colony and this is written in a UN report submitted directly to the UN Secretary General and registered in the UN record. Spain will not veto anything since the international justice system will say Scotland has been annexed. Annexation generates erga omnes obligations as a supreme crime in international law. Scotland's liberation movement is exposing all this at the UN. The English colonial state's presence in Scotland is foreign occupation. It's English colonialism.
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If you'd like to read transcript of The National debate between Professor Alf Baird and Robin McAlpine, you'll find it here:
liberation.scot/static-content…
liberation.scot/static-content…
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Liberation Scotland Committee retweeted
"They did it to themselves." "They were worse than us." These are the colonists' refrains to exculpate themselves, gaslighting their victims long after their flags and statues have come down. Substitute 'Scots' for 'Africans' and 'England' for 'European and Arabs' and consider the broader colonial endeavours in which the African slave trade was conducted, and you see the picture. The Scottish Clearances, they tell us, we did to ourselves. As tools of English imperialism they tell us we were more zealous than the English themselves. Victims made architects, indeed. At Liberation Scotland we have stopped letting them rewrite history.
They want you to look at the Zanzibar slave market and say, 'See? Africans did it to themselves.'
Here is the historical context they conveniently leave out. 📖
It is true that local intermediaries captured people. But the global economic machine that turned humans into cargo and Arabs.
They didn't just arrive; they deliberately flooded the continent with guns and alcohol, creating an artificial demand that fueled endless wars and kidnappings. They financed the destruction of our communities to fuel their empires.
Then, when the colonial era began, they used those same weapons and divisions to conquer us.
It was a system of imperialism that weaponized African conflict. Do not let them rewrite history to make the victims look like the architects.
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Good enough for what? 34% is apparently good enough to rule the United Kingdom!
Look, no-one is asking for indy-on-a-plate with 52% YES returned in an opinion poll of all Scots (that is to say, 54-55% of Scotland-born residents). This is a fallacy, and it's shameful for any Scottish nationalist to suggest it.
But YES/NO sentiment is emphatically not the issue. What IS the issue, is the view in Scotland on the desirability of a referendum. Indeed, the NEED for a referendum, in a country held back by a deeply divided view of our future and a British state acting against our economic interest to retain that state (see Grangemouth, Mossmorran).
An October 2026 Norstat opinion poll found 47% thought there should be a referendum in the next 5 years, while 42% thought there should not be. Factoring in the other 11% gives 53:47 in favour of an independence referendum in the next 5 years. BUT, to look again at what this means in terms of the Scotland-born population among those polled, that increases to 57:43 of native-born and resident Scots in favour of a referendum. This is getting on for what you want already, Tim.
In all this, let's be clear. We are a sovereign territorial nation. We have never given up our sovereignty to anyone, as the Claim of Right, on which any possible validity of the union might be founded, makes inviolably clear. No-one on this planet, never mid the controlling nation next door, has the right to tell us when, and how, we might ask ourselves about deciding our constitutional future.
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Crucial point made here by Sara Salyers.
No, Angus that’s like comparing kittens and footballs.
We don’t know each other so I guess it’s easy to assume that Salvo latched onto some imaginary, shiny but unrealistic interpretation of a dead historical issue. That’s my summation of the basic attitude we keep encountering, a judgment which functions as a ‘gatekeeper’ against real dialogue. It is too often the underpinning assumption in the debates we have with sceptics and, sadly, obviates any genuinely open minded exchange with those who already think they ‘know’ that we are misguided enthusiasts who are ‘just not in touch with political or legal reality’. On that basis nothing we present to explain either our argument or our strategy gets past their certainty that what we are doing is just the product of that out of touch, naivety. No fact or evidence registers when that assumption is present.
So I have two invitations for you.
First will you consider the likelihood that two years of prior research and checking, followed by two years of consulting and meeting with experts including but far from confined to Robert Black KC, Alfred de Zayas, international human rights lawyer and former chair of the HRC complaints commission, special rapporteur and author of both resolutions and several books, Ambassador George Papadatos of the European Public Law Organisation- an IGO - an ICJ lawyer and a lawyer representing a state at the C24 (can’t name those two but not Russian!), all of whom confirm or have reinforced and strengthened our case, might suggest that we are onto something? And that something might lie in a hitherto unrecognised, constitutional question which changes our understanding of the framework and conditions of Scottish self-determination? Is it possible that if Professor Black who is internationally known and respected can say publicly that for over 50 years he believed and taught the ‘union orthodoxy’ and that, approaching his 80th year, he now finds that orthodoxy to be a fiction, you might be open to considering why?
Second, I will be happy to meet and explain in detail what is involved in the kind of international recognition we are talking about here and how it clarifies and empowers, not replaces, the right of self-determination for Scotland and enabled us to exercise that right freely. How about it?
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Liberation Scotland Committee retweeted
What precisely is 'racist' about a nation wishing to take back control of its destiny? Isn't colonialism fundamentally racist? Are the 193 nations of the United Nations who go to that institution to protect their national interests 'racist'? Is the attached video clip possibly racist?
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Liberation Scotland Committee retweeted
"We could conceivably remove Westminster's authority only to reproduce its model of parliamentary supremacy in Edinburgh, transferring power between institutions without fundamentally changing the relationship between the people and those who govern them."
100% with this. It is the debate most conspicuously emerging from the present disturbances in nation states all over the Western world; the disconnect between government and people, a simulated democracy where the priorities and interests of the populace are overtly/covertly subordinated to those of the governing classes and faceless powerful influences forcing disastrous policies for ordinary people and vast profits for obscenely wealthy military and IT interests.
Scotland's constitutional, political and social traditions, so abhorred down the ages by an Anglo-Norman absolutist, pyramidal power mentality that the English spent 500 years trying before finally destroying it, are extraordinarily in tune with these world events right now.
Without bothering to understand our past, we might easily plough on, vote harvesting for an 'independence' polity depressingly little different from the detestable one England imposes on us. That is actually what is happening; what the SNP is doing and what so many pundits like Robin McAlpine are content to support.
We mustn't be led into this trap. We need a Convention of the Estates, by whatever modern name we choose, right now, founded on our constitutional rights and not on the unfounded, unanchored, 'independence' rhetoric Scots are starting to sense is being sold to them.
100% with this. It is the debate most conspicuously emerging from the present disturbances in nation states all over the Western world; the disconnect between government and people, a simulated democracy where the priorities and interests of the populace are overtly/covertly subordinated to those of the governing classes and faceless powerful influences forcing disastrous policies for ordinary people and vast profits for obscenely wealthy military and IT interests.
Scotland's constitutional, political and social traditions, so abhorred down the ages by an Anglo-Norman absolutist, pyramidal power mentality that the English spent 500 years trying before finally destroying it, are extraordinarily in tune with these world events right now.
Without bothering to understand our past, we might easily plough on, vote harvesting for an 'independence' polity depressingly little different from the detestable one England imposes on us. That is actually what is happening; what the SNP is doing and what so many pundits like Robin McAlpine are content to support.
We mustn't be led into this trap. We need a Convention of the Estates, by whatever modern name we choose, right now, founded on our constitutional rights and not on the unfounded, unanchored, 'independence' rhetoric Scots are starting to sense is being sold to them.
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"The UN route isn't about asking foreign bureaucrats to give Scotland sovereignty. It is about challenging the constitutional and international legitimacy of the authority presently claimed over Scotland, and establishing the legal consequences of that challenge."
Further important reflections on the Baird-McAlpine debate.
Further important reflections on the Baird-McAlpine debate.
An excellent response, but there's an even more fundamental weakness in McAlpine's position.
McAlpine acknowledges the economic extraction, demographic losses, cultural damage and structural underdevelopment that Alf describes, but dismisses the historical processes that might explain them. He recognises the symptoms but refuses to investigate the diagnosis.
His greatest mistake is conflating two questions: how the Scottish people demonstrate their democratic will, and by what constitutional authority that can be exercised.
He proposes sustained 60% support, then negotiations with Westminster. But 60% is a political threshold, not a legal one. What happens if Westminster refuses again? What forces it to negotiate? He never answers. His strategy, like the SNP, ultimately depends upon the cooperation of the Anglo-British state. The state whose authority over Scotland's constitutional future is being challenged.
His claim that the 2014 referendum made the Union voluntary is extraordinary. A vote against constitutional change can't retrospectively establish the lawfulness of 1707, cure any defects, or extinguish the Scottish people's right of self-determination.
His dismissal of international law is indefensible. International law exists even where direct domestic enforcement is unavailable. An authoritative legal opinion isn't an enforceable judgment; recognising sovereignty isn't the same as granting independence.
The UN route isn't about asking foreign bureaucrats to give Scotland sovereignty. It is about challenging the constitutional and international legitimacy of the authority presently claimed over Scotland, and establishing the legal consequences of that challenge.
International recognition of a credible constitutional case could itself transform political consciousness, strengthen Scottish confidence, generate diplomatic pressure and change the circumstances in which the people exercise self-determination. It could therefore contribute directly to the popular mobilisation McAlpine considers indispensable.
Democratic mobilisation and internationalisation therefore can reinforce one another.
Alf's point about 1707 deserved considerably more attention. The dissolution of Scotland's Parliament, the institutional continuation of England's Parliament and the question of whether the resulting constitutional arrangements were lawfully authorised are substantive historical and constitutional issues. McAlpine refused to examine them, much less refute them. He simply declared them irrelevant because they happened three centuries ago.
But the passage of time isn't, by itself, an answer to a question about constitutional legitimacy or its continuing consequences.
McAlpine's political campaigning experience is undoubtedly relevant to winning popular support. It doesn't entitle him to dismiss constitutional history and international jurisprudence as meaningless distractions, particularly when he offers no enforceable alternative to Westminster's continuing veto.
There are legitimate questions about how Liberation's international strategy would proceed, what institutional decisions it requires, and how favourable findings could be translated into practical constitutional change. Those questions deserve precise answers, not ridicule.
The fundamental question isn't simply how many Scots support exercising sovereignty. It is where that sovereignty resides, whether it was ever lawfully alienated, and who possesses the authority to determine how it is exercised.
McAlpine insists that the Scottish people must decide their own future. On that principle there's no disagreement.
What he never explains is why, if the people are the ultimate constituent authority, the exercise of that authority must remain dependent upon Westminster's willingness to cooperate.
That's the glaring contradiction at the heart of his argument, and no number of repaired potholes resolves it.
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Sara makes an important point here. The multi-level undemocratic architecture of the 2014 'referendum' by any international standard disqualifies it from seriously qualifying as a fair and free expression of the will of the Scottish people. To hear it stated as such, quite uncritically, by a Scottish nationalist is deeply concerning.
It failed to meet normal international standards on every measure. It was designed and managed to produce the final result. By contrast, look at the conditions applied to the referendums in Gibraltar and the Malvinas where the U.K., confident of its settler populations, went above and beyond the standard applied even in its own elections in order to silence any suggestion of improper conduct and silence the critics in the international community. The govt was determined to show it had met every standard for a fair and impartial vote.
Not so in Scotland where it failed every one.
Please note, even all this still did not satisfy the C-24 or C4 and both remain listed as NSGT’s. (Btw, we use the word colony to make the point. The word colony is rarely used in modern law, but the reality people mean is still here: states administering territories beyond their *own* mainland.) A referendum cannot automatically resolve the unlawful annexation of a territory especially, as in Scotland’s case, when it ignores the principal requirement that a state must not interfere in the exercise of that expression of public will. A referendum conducted on the basis that a component part of a state is seeking secession is not the same as a referendum conducted by (not on behalf of), a still sovereign, annexed nation deciding, not whether to secede, but whether to accept its status on the annexing state’s terms, a status that is absent an operative treaty and absent any rights and obligations whatever under that treaty. This is *not* accepted in international law and the UK state knows this. That’s why it’s that state, not Liberation Scotland, which first raised the question - in 1954 - of whether Scotland was a dependency, colony, in order to publicly deny it. It’s time our self appointed pro-indy spokespersons understood this also.
The cosmetic exercise of ‘the referendum’ was organised to produce exactly Robin’s belief that whatever our status before it, after the referendum this became a voluntary union. That, as you can see, I hope, is not true.
The flagrant manipulation of the process aside, if Scotland was annexed prior to the referendum then a poll managed by the occupying state, (including control of the postal ballot), and which allowed that state to break the terms of the Edinburgh agreement but not the Scottish ‘side’, and which was non binding, is not a legitimate expression of self determination. That unmediated and free, fair process is yet to take place.
P.S No matter who agreed to it, a franchise which includes 2nd home owners, temporary residents (students, military, temporary workers) and recent arrivals disqualifies the referendum as a test of the will of the Scottish people.
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"They did it to themselves." "They were worse than us." These are the colonists' refrains to exculpate themselves, gaslighting their victims long after their flags and statues have come down. Substitute 'Scots' for 'Africans' and 'England' for 'European and Arabs' and consider the broader colonial endeavours in which the African slave trade was conducted, and you see the picture. The Scottish Clearances, they tell us, we did to ourselves. As tools of English imperialism they tell us we were more zealous than the English themselves. Victims made architects, indeed. At Liberation Scotland we have stopped letting them rewrite history.
They want you to look at the Zanzibar slave market and say, 'See? Africans did it to themselves.'
Here is the historical context they conveniently leave out. 📖
It is true that local intermediaries captured people. But the global economic machine that turned humans into cargo and Arabs.
They didn't just arrive; they deliberately flooded the continent with guns and alcohol, creating an artificial demand that fueled endless wars and kidnappings. They financed the destruction of our communities to fuel their empires.
Then, when the colonial era began, they used those same weapons and divisions to conquer us.
It was a system of imperialism that weaponized African conflict. Do not let them rewrite history to make the victims look like the architects.
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