Fraud by Semantics

Fraud by Semantics

The difference between the Scottish and English Crowns is far more than a historical curiosity: because of the nature of the Scottish Crown, Scotland remains a sovereign territorial nation, that is, one whose resources remain the property of that nation and that nation alone.
Crown property rights in Scots law, which are an important part of Scotland’s system of land ownership, are also distinct from Crown property rights in the rest of the UK and belong to Scotland as a sovereign territorial nation.

The separate national sovereignty of Scotland’s people, the indigenous laws and the territorial integrity of the land and its assets, however, have been dealt with by successive colonial-style UK governments by pretending that they simply do not exist.
No university law department teaches Scottish constitutional law. No weight has ever been given to the Claim of Right Act as a legal instrument by which government may be limited. Scotland is represented as having extinguished itself entirely and voluntarily, the clear terms of the Treaty and the history of the negotiations for those terms notwithstanding.

The Crown in England with its ‘property rights’ over the land became simply, ‘the Crown’. And the kingdom and Crown of Scotland were extinguished by the mere use of those words. We became, according to the arguments of jurists, courts and parliamentarians, a voluntary colony.

But force of argument and wishful thinking does not make legal fact.

At no point did the authority to manage Scotland’s territorial assets pass legally to the UK government. It has simply assumed this authority as though the “voluntary political union” conferred the right to our territorial assets. It did not. And today, international laws and agreements which did not exist when Westminster attempted to reclassify Scotland as ‘North Britain’, (1950’s), hold governments to the terms of their treaties and uphold the sovereign rights of both nations and peoples.

Thus Scotland’s judicial and territorial sovereignty, distinct from the political and economic ‘Union’, ensures that, though a stateless nation, Scotland retains the legal and territorial rights and protections due a sovereign, territorial nation. And one of the fundamental rights of a sovereign territorial nation is the right to the control and the benefit of the resources it owns.

In international law, this is known as the principle of permanent sovereignty of peoples and nations over their natural resources:
The Land of Scotland and the Common Good, Report of the Land Reform Review Group
(a) The right to permanent sovereignty is a right to freely use, control and dispose of natural resources. It is permanent and inalienable, inherent in sovereignty and a basic constituent of the right to self-determination.
(b) The right to permanent sovereignty is a right of both States and peoples. While there may be some confusion in certain passages, this conclusion clearly emerges from the resolutions as a whole. It also necessarily follows from the status of permanent sovereignty as a basic constituent of the right of peoples to self-determination. In resolutions 837 (IX), 1314 (XIII), 1803 (XVII) and 2692 (XXV), the General Assembly refers to “peoples and nations”…..
(c) …
(d) The right to permanent sovereignty includes the right of peoples to regain effective control over their natural resources. In resolution 3171 (XXVIII), the General Assembly: “Supports resolutely the efforts of the developing countries and of the peoples of the territories under colonial and racial domination and foreign occupation in their struggle to regain effective control over their natural resources.”
(e) The right to permanent sovereignty also includes, in case of violation, the right to restitution and full compensation. In resolution 3201 (S-VI), paragraph 4 (f), the General Assembly includes the following principle: “The right of all States, territories and peoples under foreign occupation, alien and colonial domination or apartheid to restitution and full compensation for the exploitation and depletion of, and damages to, the natural resources and all other resources of those States, territories and peoples.” (See to the same effect article 16 of resolution 3281 (XXIX) and paragraph 33 of the Lima Declaration endorsed by the General Assembly in resolution 3362 (S-VII)). 11

The UK government has assumed control of Scotland’s mineral, hydrocarbon and renewable energy assets as if Scotland were in a full, territorial, not merely a political and economic Union. It has behaved as though there were no difference in law between the English and Scottish constitutions and, under that pretence, has defrauded a sovereign territorial nation and a sovereign people of the assets and resources which are exclusively and inalienably their own.

It has done this by applying the English principle of the monarch’s ownership of the land and its resources and assets, not as personal property, but ‘in right of the Crown’:
“Crown interest” means an interest belonging to Her Majesty in right of the Crown or belonging to a government department or held in trust for Her Majesty for the purposes of a government department.12
It is well understood by the UK government that ‘right of the Crown’, means something different in Scotland from the rest of the UK, that no government department can lawfully own or hold in trust for the monarch that which is not vested in the monarch in right of the Scottish crown.
11 Implications, under international law, of the United Nations resolutions on permanent sovereignty over natural resources, on the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories and on the
obligations of Israel concerning its conduct in these territories, General Assembly of the United Nations, Thirty-eighth session Item 12 of the preliminary list, REPORT OF THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL
12 “Promoting Development in Scotland” CEC 1998
10

And yet this is precisely what the UK government does, deliberately obscuring the problematic distinction between the Crowns which means that what is held in trust for the monarch in England, is held in trust for the Community of the Realm in Scotland. Within the laws and policies that govern Scotland’s territorial assets a single ‘Crown’, English in character, is imposed across the entire United Kingdom:

An Act to vest in the Crown the property in petroleum and natural gas within Great Britain and to make provision with respect to the searching and boring for and getting of petroleum and natural gas, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid. [12th July 1934.]
BE IT ENACTED by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
1 Vesting of property in petroleum in His Majesty
(1) The property in petroleum existing in its natural condition in strata in Great Britain is hereby vested in His Majesty, and His Majesty shall have the exclusive right of searching and boring for and getting such petroleum.13
It is as if the application of an identical description gives the British government an identical license to manage and dispose of the territorial assets of Scotland as that afforded by the ‘interest of the Crown’ in the rest of the UK. But in fact, by assuming the administration of the assets of a sovereign territory it has placed itself in the position of a trustee for the owners, the people of Scotland:
However, the rights to a number of specific minerals are held in the national interest. They are the right to gold and silver, the right to petroleum (oil and gas) and the right to coal. The public ownership of the rights to these natural resources is a very important part of public land ownership in Scotland….(but) while all Crown property rights in Scotland belong to Scotland as a sovereign territory, the Crown’s ownership of ‘petroleum’ in Scotland is administered by the UK Government.
It is arguable that the Petroleum Act 1934 was unlawful in Scotland in that it vested the ‘property’ of Scotland’s oil and gas in the person of the monarch rather than the Crown with no distinction between the territorial rights of the monarch in the nations of England and Scotland. It did, however, vest those rights in the Crown and they have continued to be recognised as vested in the Crown.
It also appears that there was some recognition, subsequent to the 1934 Act, that in order to obtain control of the assets of Scotland, the UK government would have to establish itself as a kind of trustee for the owners, the people of Scotland. (It is worth bearing in mind that any trust is required to operate in the interests of the ‘beneficiaries’, in this case the Scottish population.)
13 Petroleum (Production) Act 1934 CHAPTER 36
14 The Land of Scotland and the Common Good, Report of the Land Reform Review Group

MY COMMENTS

I cannot stress enough the crucial importance of this research. As politicians most know a little about the Treaty of Union, but Sara’s research displays that it is the previous Union of the Crowns that is being used illegally to rob Scotland. Even the title “Union of the Crowns” is a total lie. There was no union. What happened was our King also assumed the Crown of England. It became the same monarch between Scotland and England but both crowns remained separate and stayed in existence. They still exist today. This is crucial because no King ever owned Scotland’s land, assets and resources which remain the property of the community of the Realm. We need to get this information to as many Scots as possible. As many of our people face huge difficulties they need to know it needn’t be this way and we do have the power to claim back what is ours PLUS compensation

I am, as always

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