T he last plea

G M W W em yss
omorrow, the die shall be cast. One of the four home nations, and that the least populous,
shall decide the fate of all; a wee subset of British voters living in Scotland on an arbitrary date
shall decide for all Scots in the UK whether their families are to be separated by an
international frontier.
T
Never mind that theres nothing Green about a Scotland depending on North Sea oil and wholesale
fracking.
Never mind that such a Scotland should be in the red all the same, unable to afford its promised social
paradise.
Never mind that theres nothing nuclear-free in Nato membership, which depends ultimately on the
nuclear deterrent no matter where the missiles are housed.
Never mind that if if the French, Belgians, Italians, and Spaniards allow an independent Scotland
to join the EU, it must join the euro and count, in Brussels counsels, on a par with Greece. (Weve aye
called Edinburgh the Athens of the North, but I dont think thats what we meant.)
Never mind that seceding from a democracy isnt the way of Madiba, but that of Jefferson Davis and
the American Confederacy.
Never mind, even, that in the centenary of the Great War and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the
outbreak of the Hitler War, it is a shameful thing to break faith with the Jocks who fought, died, and
triumphed side by side, sharing blood, with English, Irish, and Welsh regiments.
I ask only that this be remembered. There are some 800 thousand Scots, living elsewhere inwith the
UK, who arbitrarily are deprived of a vote on Thursday, and may wake on Friday, without their
assent, to the choice of exile from their native land or sojourning as foreigners in the place where marriage
or public service or professional obligation has drawn them, Bath or Belfast, Cardiff or Carlisle.
Fairness and generosity are hallmarks of the Scots character and the Scots conscience. I ask my fellow
Scots who are being allowed a vote to take tent of us. Do not take that irrevocable step. Act as trustees for
the Scots who are not allowed to vote. Do not place an international frontier between us and our families.
Do not require us to have a passport to come home, to put flowers on a mothers grave or to be married in
a grandfathers kirk. Do not split, separate, sever, and sunder families without their consent or their being
so much as consulted.
Consult your consciences. Act in the spirit of the Scots character. Exercise the Scots virtues, I implore
you, for us who are to be left as orphans, unconsulted.
If you act according to the lights of conscience, and resile from an irrevocable step, I with hundreds
of thousands of your disfranchised countrymen am not feared of the result.
Gang canny.
O
G M W W em yssis an historian, and the author of the Village Tales series of novels, beginning with
2013s Cross and Poppy. Its sequel, Evensong, is due out shortly. He is also the author of Sensible Places:
essays on place, time, and countryside; and of The Confidence of the House: May 1940. He is the co-author
of the forthcoming The Crisis: 1914; and of When That Great Ship Went Down: the legal and political
repercussions of the loss of RMS Titanic; of 37: The year of portent; of the Bapton Books Sampler: a
literary chrestomathy; and of The Transatlantic Disputations: Essays & Observations. He is also the co-
editor and co-annotator of The Complete Mowgli Stories, Duly Annotated; and of The Annotated Wind
in the Willows, for Adults and Sensible Children (or, possibly, Children and Sensible Adults), and of a
forthcoming annotated edition of Robert Louis Stevensons Kidnapped. He is a partner in Bapton Books,
a Very Small Imprint for Sound, Solid Works.