WHAT we were never taught in Scottish schools was the fact that two years before the infamous 1707 annexation treaty (some call it the Treaty of Union) the English Parliament passed the Alien Act of 1705.
One might think that the martians had landed, and were heading for London and this alien act was to rally the English against those alien invaders from outer space. No such interstellar intervention was involved, as the aliens in question were none other than England’s next-door neighbours, the Scots.
This highly insulting and racist piece of legislature demanded that English merchants were not to trade with, nor in any way associate, with those foreign Scots. All Scots were declared aliens – not just foreigners, but ALIENS – which means to be put at a distance, to be isolated, turned away and cut off.
There was one small group of Scots who were exempt from being treated as aliens – those were Scottish Lords and hangers-on, already in England, and accepting their lot as grovelling, self-seeking parasites, bowing and snivelling, cap in hand, begging the favours of their newly adopted English masters.
It should be noted that back in the early 18th century, only wealthy merchants, lords, lairds and land-owners had the vote. Democracy, or anything vaguely resembling it, was nowhere in sight.That applied on both sides of the Border, and no democratic voting rights were in sight for another 211 years.
This Alien Act of 1705 was a stumbling block when two years later, in 1707, Queen Anne’s English delegation and the delegates from the Scottish Parliament were meeting to draw up the controversial Treaty of Union. This proposed treaty was a complete U-turn and a complete contradiction of every article of the 1705 Alien Act. So the clashing of interests, and anomalies caused by these complete contradictions, was pointed out by the Scottish delegates. After all, how could a 1707 Union advocating trade and friendship go ahead while the 1705 act making it against English law to trade or associate with Scotland?
The English agreed and said the 1705 Alien Act would be repealed, allowing the new 1707 Act to proceed unimpaired. This we all assumed had been done, and even our First Minister and many of her SNP Government talk about the Union as if it was a legitimate treaty.
Only last year a research officer for the 1820 History Society and the League of Celtic Nations, Gordon Bryce, revealed that the English, despite this conditional promise, never repealed that racist anti-Scottish hate Act. Thus the 1707 treaty went ahead illegally. The broken promise to repeal that 1705 Act wasn’t put right for another 162 years, in the Statute Law Revision Act 1857.
Despite being over-endowed by lawyers and legal specialists, the SNP have never exposed the 1707 con job as being totally illegal, unworkable, and therefore irrelevant to modern times and requirements.We must point out to the artificial Anglo-British state that by not repealing the 1705 Alien Act, as they had promised, the Act of Union could not take place. So as the late Jimmy Reid said in his famous 2001 speech at Wallace Day, there was no Union.
The Scottish nobles were bribed in millions; they sold their country in this Judas-type treachery. The people rioted country-wide. Let’s recognise the fact that Scotland was stung, and stung severely. Churchill and Attlee both said that when it comes to Scottish independence, we will only recognise the ballot box. Well, the SNP have won at the ballot box, so our Brexit negotiations should be in progress, or better still should be over, and our nation free and independent. Then after a five-year plan of enjoying our new-found freedom of being independent, let a Lib/Labour and Tory Unionist alliance draw up plans for a fair and democratic union with England, this time with equal conditions and some semblance of democracy. Submit that, via the Scottish Parliament, to a Scottish referendum. Then my vote would change to No (no Union) as once bitten, twice shy, I would want to keep wealthy Scotland free independent, and taking her rightful seat at the UN.
Iain Ramsay
Greenock and Inverclyde
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