The Long Road

A History of Scottish Independence

von M. E. Haighle

162 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

The Long Road: A History of Scottish IndependenceWilliam Wallace was not fighting for freedom. Bannockburn did not win Scotland's independence. The Scots invited Edward I into Scotland themselves. The Union of 1707 was not bought for twenty thousand pounds. And in 1979, a majority of Scots voted for a Scottish parliament, and did not get one.Most of what people know about Scotland's constitutional story is either wrong or badly incomplete. The truth is stranger, and considerably more interesting.The Long Road traces seven hundred years of a single argument: where sovereignty lies, and who gets to decide. It begins with a kingdom assembled late out of four peoples and a good deal of luck, which then told itself it had always been there and shows how that invented past became a legal claim that outlived everyone who made it.From Arbroath in 1320, through the Union, the Clearances, the workshops of the Clyde and the oil fields of the North Sea, to a referendum bill published in 2026 that cannot lawfully be passed, this is the story of how the question kept changing shape and why it has never once been settled.It is also a book about people.Devorguilla of Galloway, who founded Balliol College and carried her husband's embalmed heart for twenty-two years. Christina MacRuari, who owned the galleys that brought Robert Bruce home. Agnes Sampson, a midwife interrogated by a king and burned on Castle Hill. Joseph Knight, who sued his owner in the Court of Session in 1778, won, and then vanished from the record. Janet Cumming, aged eleven, carrying coal up a ladder in the dark. Mary Barbour, who organised the tenements of Govan so effectively that she forced the British government into rent control while having no vote herself. Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, who could not write, composed in Gaelic in her head, and gave the Crofters' War its songs.Written in plain, direct prose with no jargon and no glossary, it assumes no prior knowledge and treats the reader as an adult.And it gives the other side a proper hearing.Two million people voted No in 2014, and they were the majority. A full chapter sets out the case for the Union at its strongest, the deficit, the currency, the border, the pooling of risk, and the reasons many Scots feel British without any sense of contradiction, in its advocates' own terms, without a rebuttal attached to every line.The author declares his own position openly in the introduction, and explains where he came from and what changed his mind. Readers on both sides will find something to argue with. That is the intention.Brought fully up to date through the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, the Supreme Court judgment, and a United Kingdom in which three of its four nations are now led by parties committed to leaving it.A history for anyone who wants to understand the argument rather than win it.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798174525443
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 15.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published