SCOTS find it difficult to see why the Prime Minister should allow and
facilitate a constitutional referendum for Northern Ireland but actively
refuse one for Scotland, SNP leader Alex Salmond told an audience in
Northern Ireland yesterday.
Mr Salmond said Scots welcomed Mr Major's stance on a referendum for
the province but could not help but contrast the Government's position
on a referendum for Scotland. It was a contradiction for which the UN
Human Rights Committee last week had requested an explanation, he said.
Mr Salmond, speaking publicly in Northern Ireland for the first time
as SNP leader, said: ''You do not have to believe in independence, or
the process of independence, to accept the democratic right of people to
choose the constitutional structure they live under.
''That right of choice and self-determination is basic to modern
citizenship. The denial of Scotland's democratic rights -- a denial
based upon an archaic incorporating Union entered into in very different
times and in the context of a very different society -- is a running
sore on Scotland's body politic.''
Mr Salmond, addressing the eighth cross-community John Hewitt
International Summer School in County Antrim, also attacked sectarianism
in Scotland and called for an end to all forms of discrimination and the
protection of a written constitution for all citizens.
''The SNP's commitment to a Bill of Rights and written constitution
means that we will outlaw any discrimination but we also have to
eradicate it from the dark recesses of the Scottish psyche.''
He added: ''We also have to speak out against institutionalised
discrimination. For example, it is a scandal of some considerable
proportions that no Catholic can sit on the throne, or marry the heir to
the throne -- an attitude entrenched in law that belongs to the archaic
arrangements of the eighteenth century, not the bright prospects of the
twenty-first.''
Mr Salmond later argued that the development of Europe had opened the
door to constitutional progress in both Scotland and Ireland.
He concluded by stating that uniting Scotland in the bringing together
of the issues he identified could be done only by acts of reconciliation
and by embarking on a journey that was broader in purpose than simply
the achievement of a political aim.
''There will be a defining moment . . . an instant of change from
political dependence to independence, from Union to sovereignty. But
that moment will be a mark of our progress, not the beginning or end of
the process.
''Similarly, I believe that the process of change in Northern Ireland
cannot be understood within the conventional view of all or nothing.
There must be time to change, a process of change, and building towards
a future. That should be the concept at the heart of the peace process
and it is one that we support and encourage wholeheartedly.''
The John Hewitt International Summer School is held in memory of the
Irish poet who died in 1987.
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