Now, more than ever, it is important for people in Scotland to realise where the real source of political power resides. The SNP has a policy of "independence in Europe" and it acts to keep the electorate focused, incorrectly, on Westminster instead of Brussels.

However, our activists work to promote the understanding that membership of the EU is the one issue which governs every issue, and that the SNP policy of "independence in Europe" promises, not independence, but a dependent relationship within the EU. When members of the SNP tell us that a Scotland independent from Westminster, but part of the EU, will be able to secure a better deal for Scotland at the top-table in Brussels we explain that the aim of the EU is to operate for the supposed interests of the EU as a whole and not for the interests of any specific member. Therefore, any intention on the part of Scotland to promote its national interest will be against the ethos of the EU, and any efforts to do so will be impossible. Twenty-five years of British membership should have taught them that much.

In addition, we highlight the damage which membership of the EU has done, and continues to do, to Scotland. The coal and steel industries were "restructured" as part of EU policy to cut back on production. In fact, the EU cut back so effectively that Europe is now a net importer of steel for the first time ever (1). As we are well aware, the British agricultural industry is presently being "restructured" in accord with the EU's so-called Agenda 2000. "Restructured", here, being a euphemism for destroyed. We don't have to tell Scottish fishermen about the on-going negative effects of the EU over their lives. The major parties, including the SNP, have got nothing to say to those fishing communities which have already been destroyed and to those which are surely facing ruin at the end of 2002, when the present CFP policy on "national quotas", is to be abandoned and, at which point, the fishing fields are to become a virtual free-for-all.

This illustrates the first reason why Britain must be sovereign. If the fishing industry, and any other British industry, is to be protected and developed, then we must be free to create and implement policies which put the national interest first. This can only be done outside the framework of the present EU treaties, which submit the national interest to the supposed interest of the Community as a whole.

The good news is that Parliament cannot bind its successors. There's no legal or constitutional impediment to the unequivocal re-establishment of British sovereignty over her fishing grounds, or over any other aspect of policy. Britain can be a sovereign nation once again. That is, she can be a nation whose governing institutions exercise full and exclusive political, economic and legal authority within its territory and in its relations with the world; and which is not subject to a higher political and economic authority, in a higher legal order.

All it requires is for the British Parliament to stand up and assert its sovereignty. We can do this. We can be a sovereign nation which puts the national interest first. It only takes the vision, and the will to implement it. We must start to hear this positive message, loud and clear, in our political institutions.

In addition to putting the national interest first, sovereignty will allow us to maintain and develop democracy. We are not presuming that the British democratic system as currently constituted represents the pinnacle of democratic perfection. If that were the case we would not be in this situation. On the contrary, we understand that democracy is an evolving process. What we do believe is that the maintenance of effective democratic representation, and the evolution of participative democratic frameworks can best be guaranteed at the level of the nation-state, rather than at the level of the EU.

Tony Benn explained the democratic argument in one concise sentence: "British membership of the Community, by permanently transferring sovereign legislative and financial powers to Community Authorities who are not directly elected by the British people, also permanently insulates those Authorities from direct control by the British electors who cannot dismiss them and whose views, therefore, need carry no weight with them and whose grievances they cannot be compelled to remedy." (2)

The third reason we need sovereignty is to maintain and develop the diversity inherent in a world of distinct nation-states. The EU demands uniformity in everything. For example, some people like to emphasise those elements of Scotland which make her different from the rest of Britain, and point to Scots law and the Church of Scotland. Yet, both of those distinct elements are compromised and undermined by the EU's attempt to standardise everything throughout its jurisdiction. Scots law is subservient to Brussels and even the Church of Scotland, which has its own internal law guaranteed by the Treaty of Union, is subservient to the European Court of so-called Justice.

This process is going on throughout Britain, and throughout the continent where the real anti-Europeans - the bureaucrats of the EU - are engaged in a process of standardisation which will end up making Britain the same as France, which will be the same as Germany, which will be the same as … everywhere else. This process is world-wide.

Take the British overseas territories. These countries have distinct local cultures. Bermuda still uses imperial measurements, yet Britain is attempting to bring it into line with EU regulations.

The European Union does not protect diversity, it destroys it. For the EU, distinct nationalities and cultures are obstacles to be crushed. The very concept of a distinct nationality and a particular culture implies a preference for some values over others, for some ways of thinking and behaving as opposed to other ways. The EU seeks to erase those differences, to destroy diversity and to impose in their place a bland and rigid conformity.

Let me conclude by quoting Enoch Powell. He wrote that sovereignty finally rests upon "the will and determination of a people to be independent and self-governed which, now as ever, is the only proof that they ought to be so or that they deserve to be so." (3) This means that if you believe in independence and self-government then you must vote for it.

The future is what our vision and our will shall make of it. We have a vision of a Europe of friendly, diverse, peaceful, co-operating nation-states which have their own sovereign authority within their own political, economic and legal spheres of responsibility. As part of that wider vision, we campaign to be free to develop our own policies, to make our own laws, to keep our own currency, to run our own economy in response to our own needs, and to trade in friendship with whom we please.

So, vote for us if you are against the single currency on principle and for all time, if you believe in putting the national interest first, if you value democracy, if you value the diversity of the British way of life, and if you stand for the principle that sovereignty must be vested in, and exercised by, the people, and the governing institutions, of the United Kingdom.

References:
(1) David Gow, "EU steel groups accuse Asians of dumping", The Guardian, September 30, 1998, p. 25.

(2) From the letter sent by the Rt. Hon. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, M.P. on 29th December 1974 to his constituents in Bristol South East before the 1975 Referendum on continuing Common Market membership. Full text in Martin Holmes, ed., The Eurosceptical Reader, (London: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1996), pp. 38-41. From The June Press, PO Box 9984, London, W12 8WZ; Tel/Fax: 0208 746 1206.

3) Quoted from an essay by Enoch Powell entitled "Sovereignty". Reprinted in Enoch Powell, Reflections; Selected Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell, (London: Bellow Publishing, 1992), p. 219.