TL:DR
This is the full transcript of Emeritus Professor Black. It is being cited by people that have clearly not listened to the arguments.
For those that can’t be bothered wading through the entire thing the crux of the case is at the end and I set it out below with commentry in red. It’s simply not a legal case that Scotland is a colony, it’s just an unsupported assertion about exploitation of resources.
Begins
…the evidence the facts on the ground support no judgment other than that Scotland ceased to exist as a state in international law and was absorbed into a still extant England cosmetically renamed Great Britain.
Scotland's legal status today, more than three centuries later, is therefore not that of a partner in a union, unequal perhaps, but a union nevertheless but is that of a territory absorbed into a larger country.
[The entire case is set out above, this is entirely in line with the UK government published legal advice in the 2014 referendum. It is nothing new at all. Integration by absorption is a normal way of integration - take the absorption of East Germany by West Germany as a recent example - and does not define a colony]
A territory with only limited self-government and with its resources exploitable and exploited by the larger country for its own benefit..
[Hold on… where the bejesus did this come from? This is the end of the speech and it’s literally the first mention of resources! The entire case clearly hinges on this and he’s dropped it in after 35 minutes of deflection]
..and purposes what consequences can and should flow from the recognition and acceptance of Scotland's true legal status as a non non self-governing territory is for others to say
[So that’s it. Nothing to do with absorption but an unjustified line about resources. Seriously, is this the case that people are going to build their case on?]
Transcript begins
must reach 75% now who's who said that uh Craig in fact all of our distinguished panelists uh have been uh quite amazing so far so I'd just like you to switch yourself on sir so um our last guest on the panel to to try and convince you that uh being run from London for the benefit of Westminster and all the hy that goes on Charlie you know um is a professor now the problem with all these professors is they're very clever i find that quite offputting myself um I've not met this gentleman before before today but um so I want you to listen very carefully so Professor Robert Black KC so Kings Council i've got some more initials to give you are you writing them down because there's going to be a pop quiz at the end so Robert Black KC F R SA F R S E F FCS mhm fhea is also professor of Scotslow at the University of Edinburgh i've heard of that um is here to give you a very important message and a very important message to the world so we've already established Scotland is probably a colony and but doesn't want to be so may I introduce to you Professor Robert Black KC ladies and gentlemen thank you very much i never expected to be here either physically or intellectually i've been involved in the law of Scotland in various capacities student practicing advocate law reformer law teacher encyclopedia editor part-time judge for more than 60 years [Applause] for 59 of those years I have believed implicitly and in my career I have encouraged others to believe that as a result of the treaty of union the acts of union the Scottish and English parliaments ceased to exist that effectively as states in international law Scotland and England ceased to exist and were superseded by a new entity the United Kingdom of Great Britain now that I may say was not the view of the early 18th century early 18th century scholars politicians as to what had happened in 1707 that became the standard orthodox view really only in the 19th century and it's to a considerable extent due to an English legal scholar called Arthur Ven Dice now when I was a student our professor of constitutional law at the University of Edinburgh used to embody in his weekly lectures usually a statement at some point but Dy was wrong one thing however he never claimed that Dye was wrong about what happened in 1707 the abolition of the two countries of Scotland and the superseding of a single country the United Kingdom now following DIY other leading lawyers in both England and Scotland followed that view a leading English international lawyer lord McNair wrote in wrote in 1938 England and Scotland ceased to exist as international persons and became the uniary state of Great Britain now that was a view that was also accepted by Scottish lawyers now Professor TB Smith of Edinburgh University he was the professor one of the professors of law when I was first became a student you cannot think of a more convinced legal nationalist than Professor TB Smith but he concurred in the view that that was what had happened he wrote in 1957 "The separate kingdoms of Scotland and England merged in the new state of Great Britain and ceased to exist as persons for the purposes of international law." Now TB Smith's counterpart in Glasgow was Professor David Walker now Walker in Glasgow took exactly the same view of what had happened in 1707 one of the few things I may say that Smith and Walker ever agreed about i however having been induced to look to look as a lawyer with fresh eyes at what actually happened in 1707 and thereabouts i am now convinced that this explanation of what actually happened in 1707 is false the events the events of 1707 certainly resulted in Scotland's Parliament and executive government ceasing to exist but was there any parallel in England were the governmental institutions of both nations replaced by institutions of a new state the answer of course is no and what I want to do is to look at the institutions of government now the first branch of government I want to look at is the legislative branch now after 1707 both houses of the English Parliament remained in being exactly the same as before save for the addition to the House of Commons of 45 Scots selected by the outgoing Scottish Parliament and 12 peers selected by the peers of Scotland the incumbent officers and members of the Parliament of England remained exactly as before and they of course were the overwhelming majority in that new body not even a general election was held to mark this supposedly new institution so what happened well for Scotland everything changed we lost our legislature but for England nothing changed now they didn't even elect a new speaker the speaker before the Scots joined remained the speaker after the Scots joined now the speaker in question was one John Smith MP for Andover now those of you who remember him or know of him at all probably remember him for one thing and that one thing is that he said "We have catched Scotland and will bind her fast." Also not just the speaker was the same all of the standing orders of the English Parliament remained in being and the legislation that was passed by that Parliament continued in an unbroken series acts of Parliament as you may know in those days were normally in England described by the regal year of the monarch plus a chapter number now the act of the English parliament which ratified the treaty of union was numbered 6 and chapter 11 the last act passed by the English Parliament before the new dispensation took over was 6 and chapter 34 and you may find it interesting that 6 chapter 34 was an act for continuing the laws relating to the poor and to the buying and selling of cattle in Smithfield and for suppressing of piracy an interesting group of subjects to form the topic of one act of parliament but that's merely by the way that was 6 an chapter 34 the first act passed after the Scottish members joined the parliament was numbered 6 and chapter 35 and it was a land tax act I may say that the second act which received the royal ascent on the same day as the first act uh was an act to repeal certain Scotch acts namely the Scottish parliament's act for the security of the kingdom and its act an peace and war that was 6 an chapter 36 so for The English Parliament nothing changed for England nothing changed what about the executive branch of government well in 1707 the executive branch of the government in Scotland the privy council and various other persons was superseded by the existing executive structure pertaining in England including the English privy council with however the addition of a secretary of state for Scotland but that didn't last long the office of secretary of state for Scotland was abolished in 1746 and thereafter Scotland was managed and that's the word used managed scotland was managed by the Lord advocate until 1827 and thereafter it was managed by the home office now that to uh happened until 1885 when a secretary of Scotland was introduced and upgraded in 1926 to a secretary of state for Scotland but in 1707 the whole of the executive governmental structure of Scotland changed it was abolished what happened in England in England the executive government the institutions of executive government changed not at all for England nothing changed now one of the functions of the executive branch of government is the conclusion of treaties and agreements with foreign countries prior to 1707 both Scotland and England did this scotland had treaties including treaties with France with the Pope and with various Scandinavian states after 1707 legal scholars regarded none of those treaties continuing in subsistence they all lapsed when Scotland as a state in international law ceased to exist by contrast England's pre707 treaties were regarded by the new regime and by legal scholars as continuing in full force and effect not withstanding the supposed creation of a new kingdom that includes the oldest English treaties still in existence the England's treaties of alliance with Portugal in 1373 and 1386 the view of the English government the view of legal scholars was that these treaties continued in full force and effect but it's more than that england's diplomatic representation in the countries of Europe in the kingdoms of Europe continued uninterrupted no fresh credentials were submitted by the existing English embar ambassadors in consequence of the supposed new regime now an ambassador supposedly represents a territory under the monarch the monarch was claiming now to represent Scotland as well as England it was all one country it was a new country therefore there was if you like an a suggestion that perhaps it might have been an idea that the ambassadors of this new unified state should present fresh letters of credence to the governments to which they were assigned none of that happened and instructively none of the foreign states to whom these ambassadors were accredited regarded it as necessary that new credentials on behalf of this supposed new state should be presented so Scotland lost if you like its international persona but for England nothing changed what about the judicial branch of government the third of the branches well it's clear that as far as the judicial branch of government is concerned for England nothing changed at first sight if you look simply at the legislation at the treaty and acts of union it would appear from the text that for Scotland too nothing changed article 19 is the relevant article of the supposed treaty that the court of session or college of justice due after the union and notwithstanding thereof remain in all time coming within Scotland as it is now constituted by the laws of that kingdom and with the same authority and privileges as before the union subject nevertheless to such regulations for the better administration of justice as shall be made by the parliament of Great Britain similar provision relating to the criminal court the court of session the college of justice was the Scottish civil court uh the criminal court the court of judiciary similar provision in article 19 which then ends that no causes in Scotland be cognizable by the courts of chancery Queensbench common please or any other court in Westminster Hall and that the said courts or any other of the like nature after the union shall have no power to cognize review or alter the acts or sentences of the judicatures within Scotland so there you are these were the standard English courts they met in Westminster Hall these courts were not to have first instance authority over cases from Scotland nor were they to have any appellet authority from the courts of Scotland however under the English system appeal in certain circumstances could be taken from these English courts to the House of Lords now it's a different House of Lords it's not the House of Lords sitting as a House of Parliament as a house of the Legislature it's the House of Lords sitting with another hat on uh sitting as the highest court the highest court in the English court structure now there was something vaguely equivalent in Scotland uh protestation for remid of law enabled dissatisfied litigants in the court of session to take their case under defined circumstances to the Scottish Parliament that was a protestation for her meat of law and because that possibility existed under the claim of right actually uh existed in Scotland soon after 1707 it was asserted that an appeal should now lie in place of protestation for rembid of right to the Scottish Parliament an appeal should lie to the House of Lords the ultimate court of appeal in England and the House of Lords in its judicial capacity swallowed this hookline etc not of course it did because it's an extra piece of control and control is important so it was that from 1707 the ultimate court of appeal in civil matters in Scotland became the House of Lords and I may say the Scots made great use of this right of appeal that had been recognized i have to say that their confidence in the unbiased justice that might be delivered to them in that times college of justice was not high so in any event whatever the reasons appeals from Scotland to the House of Lords were recognized and so after 1707 the ultimate court of appeal in civil matters in Scotland became the House of Lords now it's a House of Lords sitting as a court was normally staffed by the Lord Chancellor the head of the English judiciary the Lord Chancellor any other peer who had held high judicial office was also entitled to sit now very often the Lord Chancellor sat alone between 1707 and 1867 the final court of appeal from Scottish civil courts contained not one single judge trained or qualified in the law of Scotland lord Chancellor Erskin 1806 early 19th century good Scottish name but a lawyer trained and qualified only in England said in the chamber I know something of the law but of Scotch law I am as ignorant as a native of Mexico these were the people who formed the ultimate court of appeal from Scotland here's another example 1858 Scottish appeal to the House of Lords now the judge sitting was one Lord Cranworth a former Lord Chancellor uh and he had decided that if this case had come to him from England through the English court structure he knew what the answer was the English law was clear and so he went on to say "But if such be the law of England on what ground can it be argued not to be the law of Scotland?" The law as established in England is founded on principles of universal application so since 1867 at least one judge from the Scottish system now it's normally two have been appointed to sit in the final court of appeal originally the House of Lords now the Supreme Court but I think you can perhaps imagine how much damage was done to the law of Scotland between 1707 and 1867 and Scots law and English law were entirely different they were entirely different systems based on entirely different sources scotland was a part of the European legal tradition of received Roman law england was not england was as in so many things absolutely unique it it had a system of law based on what the judges who happened to be presiding over the case thought they should do and then once judge one judge had done it everyone every other judge was required to follow that the doctrine of precedent so that's different systems different methods of operation so even though today you have two judges sitting in the ultimate court of appeal from Scotland a bench is normally one of five so even today if both Scots sit in a Scottish appeal they are inevitably outnumbered by judges trained and qualified in a different system no way to run a Swedish law one would have said so on the face of the Articles of Union it appeared as if the independence of the Scottish judicial system had been preserved intact but in reality and in actual practice it was subordinated to the highest English appeal court and it remains so today but in England nothing changed now Sarah mentioned uh in her talk the opinion given by two international lawyers uh in the context of what was then a forthcoming referendum on independence in Scotland the United Kingdom government in 2012 in anticipation of the referendum taking place commissioned an opinion uh from two distinguished very distinguished international lawyers cambridge professor James Crawford who was a senior council from Australia but was a member of English barristers chambers and professor Alan Bole who was one of my colleagues was professor of international law at the University of Edinburgh but also an English barristister and a member of barristers chambers in England now the purpose of this opinion was to advise in the event of Scotland becoming an independent state in international law whether there would be a state successor to the United Kingdom succeeding seamlessly to the United Kingdom's rights and obligations under international law including of course uh membership of the security council of the United Nations just to mention one case at random so would there be a successor state if the United Kingdom split up and if so what would the successor state be would it be Rump UK in other words England or would it be Rump UK plus Scotland would there be two success equal successor states those were that was the problem well Crawford and Bole in uh their opinion came to the conclusion in 184 paragraphs spread over 45 pages that there would indeed be a successor state if Scotland became independent and that state would be England alone now I have to say this was not a surprising conclusion and as a matter of strict international law regarding state succession it was not necessarily an incorrect opinion sorry but it was not necessarily wrong however that was the conclusion they reached surprise surprise now on route to reaching this conclusion the professors considered the legal nature of what happened in 1707 now in paragraph paragraphs 34 and 35 of their opinion they wrote one view is that the union created a new state great Britain into which the international identities of Scotland and England merged and which was distinct from both an alternative view is that as a matter of international law England continued albeit under a new name and regardless of the position in domestic law and was simply enlarged to incorporate Scotland now it is perfectly clear from this opinion and from the examples that they give of the continuation unchanged of English institutions that Crawford and Bole favored the England enlarged view of what happened in 1707 now they did not find it necessary actually to decide that question in order to reach the conclusion that whatever the position in 1707 as a result of 1707 had been the position if there was a breakup as a result of the referendum was that England would be the successor state and not Scotland but it's interesting you see that these two very distinguished international lawyers recognized what the alternatives were and although they did not get down completely off the fence it is perfectly plain which alternative they thought was actually the correct one well given that there are these two alternatives how does one decide between them well I've looked at the institutions and how institutions either differed or stayed the same after the events of 1707 took place but if you're looking not at the international sphere is there any other sphere which is useful by analogy this is what lawyers do if you are confronted with a problem for which there is no immediate binding authority that governs what the decision must be you tend to look for an analogy that may be helpful to you in resolving this legal problem now it occurred to me that the closest possible analogy to what happened to Scotland and England in 1707 uh was the law of takeovers and mergers in company law mergers typically a mutual agreement two companies dis normally of relatively similar size and strength decide to combine into a new single entity a takeover involves one company the acquirer taking control of another company the target in a takeover the target company becomes a subsidiary of the inquirer or is completely absorbed into the acquirer's operations the acquirer has the controlling power and makes the key decisions now takeovers can be friendly or they can be hostile but in company law there are wellrecoognized tests for determining whether what has happened is a merger or a takeover i have no doubt that any corporate lawyer looking at the events of 1706 and 1707 and later would classify what occurred as a takeover not a merger whether the takeover was friendly or hostile I don't propose to go into well what's my conclusion my conclusion is that no honest and conscientious lawyer can look at what happened in the first decade of the 18th century to the institutions of government north and south of the tweet and reach the conclusion that the preexisting states of Scotland and England both ceased to exist and that a new state emerged phoenix-like out of the ashes the evidence the facts on the ground support no judgment other than that Scotland ceased to exist as a state and international law and was absorbed into a still extant England cosmetically renamed Great Britain scotland's legal status today more than three centuries later is therefore not that of a partner in a union unequal perhaps but a union nevertheless but is that of a territory absorbed into a larger country a territory with only limited self-government and with its resources exploitable and exploited by the larger country for its own benefit and purposes what consequences can and should flow from the recognition and acceptance of Scotland's true legal status as a non nonself-governing territory is for others to say thank you [Music] happy well ladies and gentlemen at the beginning of this session I think I said that um we should be very worried about lawyers because they do seem to be very clever and smart um they have a habit of being right so what have we learned in the last two hours we've learned um that a certain woman uh on our panel has doggedly dug and created an organization in fact two organizations called uh Salvo and Liberate Scotland Liberation Scotland not to be confused with the more recent Reincarnation um and that approximately 18,000 people have signed up and joined that and I'm sure after today that number is going to go up much much higher and in fact I would encourage everybody watching not only here but at home to go and knock on their neighbors door and introduce this idea that Scotland has never been in a union it has been absorbed and run for the benefit of our neighbors south of the border and we need to see the numbers going up so what else have we uh learned well we've learned um from Professor Beard uh that uh there's a colonial mindset which is reinforced especially up here with uh denying our our culture uh both in the media and for things to be promoted in such a way that Scotland's always crap and England's always wonderful unless of course they can make it um look the other lawyer a lawyer who is going to help take Scotland's message to the United Nations and to Geneva and for that I have to say it's been a breath of fresh air although I came in here 100% convinced that we were better together all along h however uh I think I am now beyond 75% um and uh there can be no doubt that what you've got in front of you on this stage excluding myself is a crack team that's going to take the message to the international community [Music] [Applause] so the job is almost done for here i I have to say that when we started this journey five years ago SSRG Oh the the unionists are here already we five years ago we created SSRG myself and Mark uh Mark Dr mark McNot um and apart from him being cap I'm being a capitalist and terrible person who wants to make a profit on things and he wants to give everything away for free uh apart from that difference we both um have exactly the same view scotland i'm very proud to be Scottish and I'm very proud of my country and this has made me proud and as as you leave today uh we still have one more thing to do um this afternoon and the bar will open soon cuz we are in Scotland after all um and that does differentiate us from south of the border they you know they close their pubs at about 10:30 i mean what civilized country does that um SSRG published the claim of right uh and we published our first document was the Treaty of Union because strangely enough we couldn't find it when we were searching for it there was no sign of it nowhere so I came up with a great idea in a in a group meeting lori was there he offered immediately to give us60 pound generous of him i says that'll print about 10 copies um and I pointed out every time we researched and tried to search this subject the Treaty of Union this dusty old document where we gave up our soul and joined England and became part of a bigger union etc uh we couldn't find it all we could find was the Acts of Union for Scotland and the Acts of Union for England and that is not the same documents strangely after we printed it um it reappeared online and now you can find it but we have copies outside for sale and here's a good bit of good news you can relieve yourself of about £3 of those English notes at the door as you leave and we will help recycle them but uh seriously folks this has been great to see everybody here please go out uh after this uh conference tell your neighbors tell your families uh spread the word let's get these numbers signed up to 180,000 because that's what we need to do and may may I ask you for a round of applause for our panel of distinguished guests thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i'll do that and before before the bar opens before the bar opens there's a Q&A now going to be in hall B just across oh we have another announcement we have We have one more announcement um you will have gathered but this is the formal announcement that the ambassador for Liberation Scotland which makes him a Scottish because he's Scottish ambassador because you never stop using that title so our Scottish ambassador is Mr craig Murray which means which means that he's not allowed to go and get himself shot or bombed in Lebanon or Yemen or anywhere else until we finish the job great by the way your family would like me to add that they would quite like you not to uh uh definitely sound advice i understand getting shot and that is not a good idea um but so hall B there's going to be a Q&A and here in hall A we're about to gear up for meet the authors where we're going to have a very interesting in fact one of our guests is one of our authors so Professor Al Bear and also Ivonne Ridley and I'm hoping although I don't know if he's here yet we have another author so if you want to stick around and meet the authors please do otherwise Hall B and thank you very much for coming
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