Scottish Parliament Election 2026 / Peter Tait
Independent
We all live within hierarchal structures. Our society is composed of hierarchal structures from the family unit to the nation state. Most of us are part of several hierarchal structures.
It is through hierarchal structures our society functions and operates successfully. We can perhaps assume that if our world was a single hierarchal structure, it would operate more successfully. That may not be what we have but it may be what we need.
It is, perhaps, a necessary concept to maintain a peaceful functioning world. As our world gets smaller and becomes more like a global village it may become necessary to recognize such a blueprint if it exists.
The nearest structure we have to this ideal is the British Commonwealth which has a monarch at its head.
The question is where is it centred? My calculation is that it is centred on the Scots. If that is the case it becomes very important for us because we would have extra responsibilities.
How do I work that out? According to the Christian gospel there is a cleavage built into the system explained by St Paul in Galatians 4. Represented in our world today by the division between Catholic and Protestant. A live and relevant issue among the Scots and the Irish and less so among others.
This particular structure is cleaved from the top, and by design the cleavage goes right to the bottom, though only in our country is it an open, relevant, political and social issue. It is not a negative issue in itself.
We cannot eradicate this division but we can manage it better. When the monarchy was Scottish, the King or Queen could be either Catholic or Protestant, however, when the monarchy became English the monarchy became bonded to the Protestant side of the division this exacerbated the persecution of Catholics already established by Henry the eighth King of England.
This led to the Jacobite rebellions in the eighteenth century and the Irish rebellion in the twentieth century and the so called “troubles” in Ireland in the 1970s and 80s. This amounts to a serial pressure point which may not affect us here in Shetland but does affect our national life.
Although we cannot eradicate the basic cleavage, we can manage it better by moving the monarchy back to Scotland where it had a more even-handed unbiased application which should have been applied from day one of the Union of the Crowns.
I believe this has been a serious handicap to our country for over 400 years. It could be argued that we have done well over the past 400 years. I would argue that we have achieved the status quo in spite of our handicap which means we could do much better if we could eradicate this anomaly.
If we could do this, I believe the benefits would filter down to the whole of our society because we would be a stronger and greater country.
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