The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Malediction Upon The Naws

This is one of the most passionate, forthright and - in the deepest of senses - true pieces of writing to come from the rank-and-file YES campaign yet. Some won't like it because of it's forthrightness, but it is what many of us are thinking. And as for those who it is aimed at - NO voters - 'the truth never hurts unless it ought to.' Let's hope a few read this and pass through a 'dark night of the soul' to emerge healed and voting YES.

Since we posted this piece by Steven McBrien on our facebook page it has had over 900 shares, and nearly 70, 000 views. Read it and see why.

 Steven McBrien is a member of the National Collective and a life-long campaigner for independence.

Malediction Upon The Naws

Dear No Voters,

I think it’s finally time for me to say this. I’ve been mealy-mouthed and temperate for a while, but I’m actually going to come out and say it now, because I no more respect your right to defend the United Kingdom than I do your right to defend elitism or religious bigotry, or anything else that is patently, blatantly wrong.

If you are planning to vote No to the chance of governing yourselves, if you think that all women and all men are equal only if it benefits your wallet, if you believe in even attempting to defend privilege by birth, if you believe in sitting back and watching while the Tories systematically dismantle the NHS, if you give any kind of credit to the pledges of a Labour party and a Liberal party who jumped into bed with the Tories in roughly the time it takes the average human being to blink, if you believe nuclear weapons can be in any way justified, and that it’s fine to tell the rest of the world they can’t have them, but you of course can, if you think that once the yoke of paying for the upkeep of this obscene armoury is removed, we somehow won’t be a million times better off both financially and ethically, if you think that you will no longer be British because, despite being born on the island that for millennia has been called “Britannia”, you are not part of the pathetic remnants of a long-dead empire that still covers part of Ireland and which insists that people on the island of Ireland identify themselves as “British”, if you believe that a Westminster-centred media is telling you the truth about how wealthy your country really is, if you believe any of this laughable, fear-motivated propaganda campaign that would have made Josef Goebbels goggle in disbelief, if you believe Ireland can have open borders with the UK but Scotland can’t, if you want to justify Scotland repeatedly refusing Tories only for them to get into power to make laws for you and your children anyway, if you take seriously the words of three political parties who have betrayed you time and time again, if you think that a Conservative or UKIP-dominated government will have any kind of mandate to offer you more powers when you have already refused more powers and are rendered politically impotent after a NO vote, and even as there is growing opinion down south that Scotland must “pay a heavy price” irregardless of whether it votes NO or not, if you think Scotland won’t be totally crucified in the event of a NO victory next month, if you wave a flag that claims to speak for Britain but doesn’t even mention Wales, despite retaining the red saltire of a country whose citizens fought and died to break away from the UK nearly a century ago, if you want your kids to be subjects and not citizens, of a monarch who is somehow allowed to be called Elizabeth II even when your entire country didn’t even have an Elizabeth I, if you think that your hatred of one person should affect the future of five million people, if you think this referendum is all Alex Salmond’s doing when the people of Scotland gave him the mandate to hold it in the first place, and a huge percentage of Scots openly give up their free time to actively support it on a daily basis, if you listen to a Let’s Stay Together campaign that sends you letters signed by bleating millionaires, and which is fronted by the son-in-law of the Duke of Westminster, one of the richest men in Europe and a Scottish landowner who stands to lose millions in Land Tax in the event of a YES vote, if you think that a Scottish parliament that was specifically designed by its Labour founders to resist an SNP government is “democratic”, if you think the powers of that parliament can’t be revoked in a heartbeat, if you believe campaign literature that constantly quotes the Tory-founded and wildly pro-business IFS, if you think the Financial Times was joking about Westminster deliberately lying about our oil bonanza, if you think Forbes Magazine was merely kidding when it stated that no-one can stop us from using the pound, if you think Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey can use the pound but Scotland somehow can’t, if you think that other countries who welcomed independence wouldn’t have given their right arms for the oil we have when they were starting out, if you think we won’t become a trade and exports and renewable energy powerhouse in spite of our almost-perfect situation and geographical location to do just that, if you think little countries can’t do it when the Top Ten Richest Countries in Europe and the Top Ten Richest Countries in the World are undeniable testaments to the contrary year after year, if you believe that getting a democratic say in what actually happens to your own country is anything but a good thing, if you imagine that the socialist movement once known as the Labour Party still actually exists despite having had its heart ripped out by a war criminal twenty years ago, if you think a nation of world-famous inventors, entrepreneurs and engineers can’t govern themselves when the rest of planet Earth can, if you imagine that a nation of five million people and a nation of fifty-six million people can be united fairly on anything other than a federal basis, if you believe in an honours system that increasingly seems to resemble the Sex Offenders register, if you think that foreign wars in which our young men and women have been, can be and will be sent to needlessly die in dust-covered countries thousands of miles away are justified, if you think a political system in which only two sitting prime ministers have ever even set foot on the Shetland Islands, 34 years apart, can be defended, if you hand your pay packets into your neighbours, for them to give you a “percentage” of it back, if you voluntarily keep your neighbours’ stockpile of weapons in your own house, if you believe you are not entitled to the pound your forefathers sweated, worked and died for over three hundred years for, if you think that, even if we somehow had to give up the pound we won’t have to give up, we couldn’t deal with a currency change when we’ve all spent decades trying to persuade people to accept Scottish notes in England anyway, if you believe the words of people who tell you constantly that you can’t do it, if you think a massive inferiority complex is good for you, if you call an entire nation with a world-famous culture and identity wanting to govern itself “separatism”, if you don’t do things because you’re just too scared to do them, if you support unilateral military action over the international law a hundred million people died to gift to you, if you vote for a relationship that is so unbalanced and unfair that you are actually threatened and intimidated for even entertaining the thought of upping sticks and leaving it, if you think you are somehow economically better off with a financial capital that is hundreds of miles away in another country, if you believe in a union borne out of corruption and intimidation, and against the wills of the people of England and Scotland, if you uphold the rights of financial terrorists to do as they please while the poorest in society suffer for it and bail them out with their own money, if you think that these ridiculous bailouts are even necessary in the first place after seeing Iceland telling the corporate criminals to get lost and now reaping the rewards by prospering as the eighth richest country in Europe, even while we get treated to more and more foodbanks, library closures and hospitals shutting down, if you are seriously planning to defend before the entire planet an unelected upper chamber with 92 hereditary peers, whose archaic rules have been out of date for centuries and whose 775 members earn £300 a day just for turning up, if you believe that a political system which denies office to Catholics is anything other than totally abhorrent, if you treat the most negative, fear-driven and insulting political campaign in modern history with anything other than the total contempt it so richly deserves, if you think that an entire nation rising to its feet before the world, only to whimper “Sorry! We can’t do it!” before sitting mutely and meekly back down again will somehow not become a global laughingstock, if you honestly think you won’t spend the rest of your lives woefully trying to defend yourselves to the people who come after you and who demand to know why, if you live your lives obeying the instincts of fear and cheerless pessimism over the instincts of hope and possibility, if you are planning to defend any or all of this bullshit while the world watches you doing it, then I don’t question your political beliefs, I don’t question your motivations and I don’t even question your consciences. I actually question your fucking sanity.

There have been many misconceptions in this debate; the biggest one, however, is that it is we YES voters who somehow have to defend our arguments. We don’t. We don’t have to defend them. You’re the ones who should be defending your beliefs. If you don’t believe in basic human rights, if you don’t believe in democracy, if you choose to uphold privilege and royalty over equality and justice, then it’s time for you to start defending your beliefs, because I for one will never, ever, ever stop attacking them. Whether you “win” in September, or whether you lose, I will attack your beliefs before the eyes of the world, and I will go on attacking them relentlessly and pitilessly, either for the rest of your life, or for the rest of mine. I will attack them when you wake up, I will attack them when you go to bed, I will attack them in your dreams and I will attack them in your nightmares, I will attack them in writing and I will attack them in voice, I will attack them at Christmas and I will attack them on your birthday, I will attack them from the streets and I will attack them from my home, I will attack them in the spring and I will attack them in the fall, I will attack them with glee and I will attack them with rage, I will attack them in print and I will attack them in public, I will attack them until I die and I will ensure that others will go on attacking them after I’m gone, I will attack them and attack them and go on attacking them until you cover your ears and snivel in wretched despair. I will tell the entire world what you believed, and exactly what you tried to deny to your own posterity; I will holler it to the heavens until I have no voice left to screech with, I will set it down in print so that every single one of the unborn billions that come after us can marvel at it. I will tear your pathetic excuses for arguments all the new ones they could ever have torn and I will pour scorn upon you and your miserable beliefs until the breath leaves my body. Do you understand what that means? Do you?

It means that you’ve already lost.