Kosovo-scotland parallels offend
Bid to label Scots as oppressed dismissed
Britain’s leading judges have “demolished” the notion that the Scots are an “oppressed” people or that Scotland is comparable to a “colony” being subjected to British rule against its will.
The claims - often deployed by the more extreme factions within the independence movement - were given legitimacy by the SNP’S submission to the Supreme Court, which sought to compare Scotland to Kosovo and invoke international rights to national self-determination.
However, in a 35-page ruling delivered in London yesterday by the court’s Scottish president, Lord Reed, the arguments were decisively dismissed along with the claim that the Holyrood parliament could legally hold its own “advisory” referendum, ending a debate which has rumbled on for a quarter of a century.
Donald Cameron, constitution spokesman for the Scottish Tory party, said: “The Supreme Court could not have been clearer in its total dismissal of the SNP’S absurd claim that Scotland is some kind of oppressed colony.
“The nationalists’ attempt to draw parallels between Scotland and Kosovo was crass, tasteless and offensive. It was rightly, and comprehensively, demolished by Lord Reed.”
The Supreme Court shot down
SNP claims that Scots should be considered “a people” and that their “inalienable” right to selfdetermination under international law was being thwarted.
While the party was blocked from oral arguments in court, it was allowed to make a written submission which included far more unconventional legal arguments than those presented by the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, Nicola Sturgeon’s top law officer.
The SNP suggested that by blocking a referendum, the UK Government is interfering with “fundamental rights” of Scots and compared their struggle to Kosovo’s fight for self-determination after years of bloody ethnic conflict.
However, the court ruled there were “insuperable obstacles” to the
SNP’S claims, adding: “The principle of self-determination is simply not in play here.” Lord Reed said that a Canadian court case relied upon by the SNP, concerning the independence movement in Quebec, found that a right to selfdetermination only applied in former colonies or in cases where people were oppressed.
The court ruling pointed out that submissions by the UK Government, in support of Kosovo’s declaration of independence and cited by the SNP, stated that there was no internationally recognised “right” to selfdetermination in Scotland’s context.
Lord Reed said: “The SNP rely on the judgment of the Canadian Supreme Court in a case concerned with Quebec. But in that case, the court held that the right to selfdetermination under international law only exists in situations of former colonies, or where a people is oppressed as, for example, under a foreign military occupation or where a definable group is denied meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, cultural and social development.
“The court found that Quebec did not meet the threshold of a colonial people or an oppressed people. Nor could it be suggested that Quebecers were denied meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, cultural and social development. The same is true of Scotland and the people of Scotland.”
Sturgeon had planned to hold an independence referendum on October 19 next year, without UK government consent. She has now been forced to ditch the proposal the third time she has abandoned a timetable for a referendum.
Bain, as Lord Advocate, had suggested that because a referendum result, in itself, would not end the Union, it should have been ruled that a Holyrood-run vote did not impede powers reserved to Westminster under the UK constitution.
Under the Scotland Act that established devolution, “the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England” and “the Parliament of the United Kingdom” are explicitly within Westminster’s remit.
The Supreme Court rejected the argument that because the result of an “advisory” referendum would not be legally binding, it would not relate to reserved matters. Lord Reed explained judges were obliged to consider the “purpose and effect” of a provision, as well its consequences in a legal sense.
“A lawfully held referendum would have important political consequences relating to the Union and the United Kingdom Parliament,” he said.
“Its outcome would possess the authority, in a constitution and political culture founded upon democracy, of a democratic expression of the view of the Scottish electorate.
“It would either strengthen or weaken the democratic legitimacy of the Union and of the United Kingdom Parliament’s sovereignty over Scotland, depending on which view prevailed. It would either support or undermine the credentials of the independence movement.”
— Telegraph Group Ltd