Project Sovereignty

How we make the Convention of the Estates a legal right

The UK constitution currently acknowledges none of our ancient constitutional principles which collectively reinforce and develop those expressed in the Claim of Right Act of 1689.

The UK Parliament operates, instead, under principles first established for the pre-Union, English Parliament, notably in the Bill of Rights of 1689, which introduced parliamentary privilege and the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty

Background

Power in Scotland is vested in the people and loaned to the monarch and parliament for the good of the realm. A bit like a bank loan, this power loan has always carried certain conditions which form a compact between the lenders, (the people), and the borrowers, (the government). Under that compact no government may infringe the rights and liberties of the people, or violate the laws that protect them, on penalty of removal. This is the heart of the Scottish constitution, popular sovereignty.

The compact was embodied in two separate assemblies. One, known from the 16th century on as the Convention of the Estates, (Assembly of the Communities), represented the lenders, the nation or people. The other was the parliament or Three Estates which, along with the monarch, was the borrower, the government.

Download The Treaty Bites Back

A ‘ Forgotten’ Constitution, Scotland’s Claim of Right

Modern Claim of Right

We Have a Modern Claim of Right and the means by which to enforce it.

We have the right and the power to challenge the legality of parliamentary sovereignty in Scotland and to reverse the abuses committed against our protected rights. We have, in principle, both the right and the constitutional mechanism to declare this government forfeit under the conditions set out in the Claim of Right and ratified by the parliaments of England and Scotland.

The sovereign power of the Scottish people is divided equally amongst us. It has force only through the combined will of the majority of Scots. If we are to reclaim that power, we will have to unite, to reestablish the once flourishing tradition of Councils, Conventions and Assemblies.

We need to declare the “invasion” of our constitution unlawful and to begin replacing an unconstitutional government and power system with the best expression of self-government that we can imagine.

We will have to be brave enough to believe that we can do it. But is that really a bigger ask than taking on the Westminster juggernaut and trying to win the game on their playing field and by their rules? As if our own did not exist? Or is it just a matter of taking the first step?

The door is open. We need only walk through it.

The Convention of the Estates

The existence of a body representing not the monarch or the monarch’s government but the ‘community of the realm’ can be traced from the time of the Guardians of the Realm in 1286 to its final expression as the Convention of the Estates, (meaning ‘assembly of the communities’).

The Convention of the Estates did not govern except in the absence of a legitimate monarch (and, therefore, of the parliament). It was not a permanent body but was recalled as needed. It could be – and often was – called by the monarch, (especially when funds ran low), but it was not the instrument of the crown.

It was the broker between the people and the government, agreeing taxes, drafting legislation and, when necessary, recalling the loan on the basis of breach of contract, which is to say deposing the monarch and government of the day.

The Convention of the Estates (the assemblies of the communities) remains the physical expression of the nation in the constitutional compact. There can be no popular sovereignty without the means to exercise that sovereignty.

As popular sovereignty is protected so is the right to exercise that sovereignty through the assembly of the communities of the realm, the Convention of the Estates which remains on a kind of legal ‘stand’ to be recalled for this purpose.