First Published: The Vanguard, August 1920
Transcription\HTML Markup: Scottish Republican Socialist Movement Archive in 2002 and David Walters in 2003
Copyleft: John Maclean Internet Archive (www.marx.org)1999, 2003. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
The Scottish Home Rule Association has in July issued the first number of it’s News Sheet, devoted to self-determination for Scotland. There will be no self-determination if Scotland is ruled by a handful of KCs at Edinburgh. Since the Earl of Stair sold Scotland in 1707 the Edinburgh lawyers have been paid by the English government to keep Scotland as a helpless, dependent patch of her empire, and since the ’forty-five rebellion Scotsmen, Highlanders particularly, have been used to do a large part of England’s dirty work of placing the yoke on innocent races. The latest is the attempt to use Scottish boy soldiers to murder the Irish race. Scotsmen of spirit must revolt against that. Let us fight on the side of Ireland, for Ireland’s independent republic. Our friend McArthur’s paper Liberty is also devoted to the re-institution of Scottish independence, and Comrade R. Erskine of Mar in his Guth na Bliadhna is also wedded to the same cause.
Scotland, however, can only have real independence for all her inhabitants under communism controlled and evolved by workers’ committees as in Russia….
In the autumn we intend to make a “big push” on the Highland question, and to get Scotsmen to rally round communism and work hand-in-hand with our sister race of Ireland against economic as well as political tyranny. Lord Leverhulme must not be allowed by bribery and corruption to use Highlanders to oust Highlanders out of their native land. We must encourage the Highlanders to co-operate communally to cultivate the land with the latest machinery. Only thus can the best results be obtained out of the Highlands and its sturdy inhabitants. The old communal traditions of the clans must be revived and adapted to the modern conceptions and conditions. If the Bolshevik notion of world communism through national communism is scientifically correct, then we are justified in utilising our latent Highland and Scottish sentiments and traditions in the mighty task confronting us of transforming capitalism into communism.