John Drummond. founding member of the Constitutional Commission explains why it is now time for a New Constitutional Convention and how you can help.
Who wants a Constitution? Well, actually Scotland does. Indeed we have never been in greater want of a constitution than now. Put simply, a constitution tells you what a body (a country, a social club) stands for, as well as what it will not stand for. Granted, some constitutional discussions may seem dry and boring - until the time comes when you need to look to your rights and responsibilities. Could you say right now what these are? Assuming you could figure out what rights you have; do you know what safeguards exist to protect these rights?
Let’s say the state decides to go to war, and you don’t. You choose to live in a democracy so you accept that you are bound by the majority view. So what constitutes a majority? One vote, one hundred, a thousand? After all this is a major decision. A vote taken where? In parliament; which parliament? An opinion poll? A million people on the streets?
None of this is new and various states have tackled it in different ways and come to a variety of answers. Few, however, have taken the peculiar route travelled in the UK and ended with an unwritten constitution. It’s no secret that unwritten constitutions are deeply unfashionable - and for good reason. (Taken to its extreme there is nothing to prevent the UK parliament deciding by a single vote that having red hair is unconstitutional.) Or it could abolish the Scotland Act, maybe deciding that devolution hasn’t worked as intended.
That’s OK; you say, we have checks and balances like the House of Lords. In the light of the cash for peerages row, one is reminded of the old description of the Chicago police force as: “the best that money could buy”. So you see this is serious stuff. And it goes on. For some time the UK had two Prime Ministers - GB and TB. Who is really in charge? Who knows? The only guide seems to be press reports, and the media says it is difficult to decide because there are no precedents. You mean it isn’t written down somewhere who is in charge? And who decides? Nope, the decision appears to rest on the fact that it was done this way once before, so it must be fine.
Lest we forget too, Prime Minister Blair was elected by a minority of the electorate and chose to hand over to someone else in mid term and at no stage were the governed consulted. This is so crude and unsatisfactory that the terms ‘banana’ and ‘republic’ come readily to mind.
Soon the Conservatives will announce their latest round of constitutional tinkering with the odd Grand Committee here and a review body there. And this will be followed, as sure as night follows day, by a response from another political party. The outcome will be minor refurbishments to a crumbling edifice that is well past being ‘fit for purpose’ for the 21st century. Moreover, with a minority government in Scotland the likelihood is that constitutional issues will intensify. And we will be in the front line of these constitutional meanderings. Do we really want all these essential matters dealt with on a piecemeal basis?
Go to www.constitutionalcommission.org , if you agree that this is no way to run a country. There you’ll find a description of our appeal to have all constitutional matters affecting Scotland debated and decided in this country and how we‘d like to help determine a written constitution. Importantly we want to do this by asking the people. The usual form for constitutional debates is that the politicians decide what’s best and put it to the rest of us. We’d like to reverse this process. You can help. Join us.
John Drummond lives in Kinrosss, is the Managing Director of good corporate governance consultancy Integrity Works, and is a founding member of the Constitutional Commission. He was also recently elected to YouScotland's Advisory Group.
Beautifully succinct and to the point. What I take John to be saying is that we have a choice: either to become a REAL democracy or continue to be merely a TOKEN pseudo-democracy - primarily serving the vested interests of political parties, big business and finance.
This is not an academic question, as recent history makes abundantly clear. The UK could not have been dragged into an illegal and immoral war on the say-so of a tiny handful of people (against the clear wishes of the majority) if there had been real democracy here.
'No taxation without representation' - the old battle-cry of the American independence movement. It's still valid. I don't accept that I am allowed no say in how much tax I pay and what my tax money is used for. My views and the views of possibly millions of others who would agree with me go unrepresented in Britain's "elective dictatorship".
Britain (i.e. the British government) spends about £35 billion a year on arms - the second highest spending in the world after the USA (and roughly on a par per head of population). Does anyone imagine that the world is a safer - or juster - place from the mass production of killing machines? In whose interest is this obscene level of production (1.5 trillion US dollars a year - more than is spent on any other area)?
More to the point - why do we allow governments the sole right to decide these matters? Why do we remain silent when hundreds of thousands are murdered to serve geo-political ends? Can we wash our hands of responsibility? I don't think so.
But in order to exercise our responsibility we need political power; we need to set the ground rules and have the means of reining in our 'representatives' when they serve other gods than peace and justice.
Only a written constitution drafted by and with the Scottish people and endorsed by them in a referendum can potentially give us the political power we need.
It was especially interesting to read John's piece immediately after reading the new guest blog by Ian Ross. A Scotland that seeks to found its sense of identity on nationalism, symbols and past glories is not a Scotland fit for the 21st century. History should teach us to be extremely wary of appeals to nationalism. Our pride ought to come from being more democratic, more caring, more committed to justice everywhere, more aware of the need for radical change in world politics and economics. Ian Ross's vision is a backward-looking one which displays no understanding of what democracy actually means - forcing him to still pin his faith in our undemocratic political system.
That system is nothing less than a confidence trick - a deceitful means of retaining central power whilst conning the public into believing that this is a democracy. It's straight out of Orwell's '1984', where words mean the opposite of what they are supposed to mean.
No system which has not been specifically chosen and approved by the people (and which includes the exclusive right of the people to alter it if a majority so wishes) can be genuinely democratic. Because the people of Britain have never been allowed to choose the way they want society to be organised politically (I dislike all words which imply the dominance of the majority by a minority - such as 'governance', 'government' etc.), the current systems are de facto illegitimate.
I find that a liberating realisation. It means that we do not have to accept the status quo, but are free to challenge it by whatever non-violent means are available to us.
So we do not need to wait until there is a government which generously grants us our political rights - it won't happen anyway. We need to take the initiative and generate the pressure which eventually becomes irresistible. Real democracy has always had to be forced out of the grip of the elites.
There are examples to be followed: when in 2002 it looked to the Gibraltarians as if the British government was about to do a deal with Spain to hand back Gibraltar, they organised an unofficial referendum. The turnout was close to 100% and 99% said 'No' to the deal. The deal was quickly dropped.
The challenge now is to create a mass movement for democracy in Scotland, with the primary focus being on a written constitution drawn up and agreed by the people. The question of formal independence - or full autonomy within a federal UK - is secondary. A constitution would give Scots the right to hold a referendum on independence if there were sufficient popular support. This is not a matter to be decided by any political party.
YouScotland and the Constitutional Commission (and all other organisations which share the vision of a democratic Scotland) are partners in the same enterprise: bringing true democracy to Scotland. Only then can the "settled will of the people" on a host of issues become clear.
Paul Carline (director, YouScotland; chief editor Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe (www.iri-europe.org)
Posted by: Paul Carline | 06/15/2007 at 02:05 PM
But Paul - we already have the right to hold a referendum on independence - we don't need a constitution for that.
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