Scotland's escape from the prison of the UK must be 100% non-violent - but it will be a prison-break just the same

Peter Hitchens has gone up in my estimation of late due to him leading the charge for the unsafe conviction of Lucy Letby to be revisited as soon as possible, but it's strangely reassuring to be reminded that he's still a hard-right Brit Nat extremist in other respects.  He's written a piece about the hypocrisy of those who oppose the principle of a "land for peace" deal in Ukraine, and it actually has a lot to commend it, but just look at this segment about Northern Ireland - 

"But the closest to home of all these events is the hardest to see. Thanks to brilliant Blairite spin-doctoring then and since, much of Britain has yet to realise that the United Kingdom surrendered to the Provisional IRA at the fabled ‘Good Friday Agreement’ in Belfast in 1998...The 1998 agreement is clear. All it will take is a referendum, and the six counties of Northern Ireland will become part of the Irish Republic. This is what our government signed, though Ukrainians might be struck by the way our cave-in followed strong pressure from the US, which abruptly dropped its supposed close ally.  The defeated must do as they are told..."

"All" it will take is a referendum?  Well, what more should it take?  Are we to assume that the principle the British government was defending in the war against the IRA was that Northern Ireland must remain part of the UK regardless of whether its people want to or not?  I don't remember that being mentioned very much at the time.  And are we to assume that "defeat to the IRA" looked like the introduction of democracy, or at least of the most fundamental democratic principle of all?  Does Hitchens actually intend to frame the IRA as pro-democracy freedom fighters, and Britain's 30-year military campaign against the IRA as being about defending a colonial possession against democracy?

This of course has implications for Scotland, because if you take it to its logical conclusion, it means that for your vote to count in a British territorial possession like Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland, you first have to defeat the British government militarily.  Now, to be clear, if our independence movement ever became violent, which it never, ever will, I would walk away from it.  I would rather live under London rule indefinitely than be associated in even the remotest way with IRA-type violence, and thankfully I will never be faced with that dilemma.  But if a Hitchens-type mindset is prevalent in the British establishment, and it does appear to be (the pretence that the UK is anything other than a prison has fallen away in recent years), we need to start thinking about the non-violent ways in which we are going to stop playing by London's rules and bring matters to a head.

My concern is that John Swinney (assuming that the cynics who say he is a devolutionist are wrong) has this notion in his head that if we can just achieve a very large supermajority for independence, Britain will eventually accept it, as they did with devolution.  But the key difference is that one of the two main London parties was actually pro-devolution, and simply delivered its own devolution policy when elected to government.  That will never happen with independence.  Labour and the Tories (and Reform) will always be opposed to it, so we'll have to find another way of breaking the logjam, no matter how high support for Yes goes.  Remember that the Tory government of 1979-97 had no problem whatsoever continuing to resist devolution even when support for it in opinion polls reached 70-80%.

So we'll have to think about tactics like civil disobedience, non-cooperation between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, and parliamentary disruption at Westminster (although the latter will be a lot more effective if and when the SNP get their Westminster majority back).

And if the SNP leadership really are saying that 50% + 1 is no longer enough for independence, then I'm afraid there's no use being squeamish about it.  In my opinion the only way a supermajority for independence is even feasible is if a massive disruptive event occurs, and the only such event I can see potentially on the horizon is a Nigel Farage premiership.