The Stirling Directive

Joint Statement of the Stirling Directive Committee

Edinburgh, 22nd July 2023

Suppose the people of a nation were kept in ignorance of their constitutional rights and recourses. Suppose they were, by various means both subtle and crude, uneducated and/or deceived regarding the history, traditions and culture of the nation they inhabit. What would become of these people?

Who would wish to create such a situation?

Who would benefit from the people of a nation being kept in ignorance of their entitlements under a constitution whose very existence has been kept from them?

In a very real sense, the true status of Scotland is foreign to the people of Scotland. The true standing of the people of Scotland is foreign to them. The real Scotland is, to a large part of the nation’s people, a foreign place. A place they are unaware of. A place that they have been purposefully kept in ignorance of.

What happens when they find out?

Peter A. Bell
19.7.23

So what happens when they find out? What happens when they find out that for 300 years Scotland has been annexed by England under the pretence that annexation was what the Treaty and Articles of Union enabled and intended all along?

What happens when they find out that we have exactly the rights of a colony – a colony England will never permit to exercise the normal, human right to self-determination. Because England cannot afford Scottish independence?

What happens when they find out that Scottish popular sovereignty means, much, much more than the right to vote, that it takes precedence over any other authority, whether at Westminster or Holyrood? That it means that the Scottish people can act on their own authority because they are the ultimate authority?

What happens when they find out that their politicians only pay lip to Scottish popular sovereignty? Lip service because these representatives do not behave and have never behaved as though they are required to act in accordance with the express will of the People?

What happens when they realise that our politicians have stood by, helplessly, as the wealth of Scotland, which belongs to the whole nation in right of the Scottish Crown, has been looted and is being looted by a foreign power in right of a foreign, an English not a UK Crown?

And what happens when they find out that they are entitled to choose, not just a different flavour of political party, but any government and any form of government – direct democracy, participatory democracy or representative democracy – suited to their needs?

We do not know exactly what will happen. But we intend to find out.

Because we intend to make every Scot aware of our real, collective authority in our nation, aware of the power to remove the many, many injustices, the many, many abuses of power, privilege and wealth that presently condemn a quarter of our people to poverty, hunger, homelessness or desperation.

We intend to ensure that every elected, Scottish representative understands the true authority of the Scottish People, an authority that remains at all times, never transferred at the ballot box and always superior, within Scotland, to that of Westminster.

We intend to ensure that our elected politicians understand that by the authority, the sovereignty, that is inherently and lawfully ours, they are empowered to respect and obey a higher power than Westminster.

Today Scotland wakes up. And the Stirling Directive campaign will take this message to the whole People of Scotland: The principle – and LAW – of the sovereignty of the people is the foundation of our nation and nationalism – now, as it always was.

It is a foundation of love and community, not Anglo-British nationalism based on fear and kleptocracy.

It means that though we are prisoners, we do not need to be. Though we have been impoverished, we do not need to be poor. Though we have had our lands and rights taken from us, we can take them back.

Because we, the people of Scotland, are sovereign.