Christophe Dorigné-Thomson

How Pre-Independence "Civic Nationalism" Became a Colonial Instrument of British i.e. English Transnational Subjugation against Scotland, a crime against Scots, a Weapon of English Settler Colonialism, & Engineered the Rigging of the 2014 Referendum Against the Scottish Nation. The Scottish National Party (SNP) played a central role in enabling this structure. Scotland is the nation of the Scots & its UN decolonization has started.

Civic nationalism, when introduced before the recovery of sovereignty, becomes a political instrument of containment. Rather than advance decolonization, it disciplines the colonised population within the language of managed fairness. Sovereignty is reframed as inclusion. The historical nation is reduced to a civic space. Memory is replaced by residency. Justice is filtered through the logic of administrative balance. The struggle for national self-determination is neutralised by legal procedure.

A people under occupation cannot define themselves through the criteria of those who occupy them. Scots are not English/British and vice versa. Self-determination begins with the assertion of national authorship. The nation speaks first & defines its people, its history, its moral claim to exist. No liberation movement has succeeded by allowing the coloniser to decide who qualifies as part of the nation. Once the right to define is surrendered, every subsequent gesture becomes a performance within the coloniser’s frame. English meddling and interventionism in Scottish affairs must end. Who gave England the right to define Scotland and the Scottish nation?

In 2014, the Scottish people were placed as always in precisely this position of colonial inferiority: the referendum was administered, rigged & manipulated by the British i.e. English state. The legal architecture, the franchise rules, & the conceptual framing were determined in London. According to official census figures, more than 850,000 people born in Scotland were living elsewhere in the fake 'United Kingdom' at the time of the vote. Most of these individuals had been displaced by historical patterns of extraction & marginalisation. Many retained a strong political and cultural identification with the Scottish nation. None were permitted to vote. Another English colonial crime.

In contrast, over 459,000 individuals born in England and resident in Scotland were granted full voting rights. English people, the colonisers of Scotland, allowed to vote on Scotland's sovereignty. Absolutely shameful. No demonstration of national belonging, political awareness, or historical connection was required. Citizens of numerous foreign states were also enfranchised, regardless of familiarity with the independence movement or investment in the outcome. The referendum was structured not as an act of self-definition/self-determination, but as a managed plebiscite in which those most likely to reject independence were granted decisive weight.

Adding to the 459,000 English-born, 17,000 Welsh-born, & 36,000 Northern Ireland-born, around 137,000 other EU-born and 232,000 additional foreign-born residents (e.g. Commonwealth countries) were allowed to vote; so in total around 900,000 non-Scots were granted the right to vote, while over 850,000 Scottish-born individuals living elsewhere in the UK were excluded, not even mentioning the millions of Scots abroad & in the diaspora. The contrast is staggering. Pure colonial manipulation and engineering. This should never have been allowed. Nowhere else in the world but Scotland did this happen. Scotland's self-determination left in the hands of the English coloniser.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) played a central role in enabling this structure.