Scotland Files Landmark Document for Freedom from Britain

Raising the stakes in its struggle for independence in advance of a referendum next year, the Scottish government on Tuesday unveiled a voluminous prospectus for a new state with its own embassies and identity, but retaining significant bonds to Britain including a common currency — the pound — and allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.

The new nation would strike out on its own in defense and its relationship with Europe, expelling British nuclear submarines from their current Scottish bases and seeking separate membership inNATO and the 28-nation European Union.

“Following a vote for independence we would make early agreement on the speediest safe removal of nuclear weapons a priority,” the 670-page document said.

Its publication, 10 months before a referendum on Sept. 18, seemed designed to encourage greater support among Scotland’s five million people, many of whom, according to opinion surveys, are undecided or opposed to independence — a step that would end more than 300 years of union reshape the political landscape north and south of the border with the rest of Britain.

The latest survey in The Sunday Times of London said 47 percent of Scottish voters were opposed to leaving the United Kingdom, 38 percent were in favor and 15 percent were undecided.

“If we vote no, Scotland stands still,” the document said. “A once-in-a-generation opportunity to follow a different path, and choose a new and better direction for our nation, is lost. Decisions about Scotland would remain in the hands of others.”

But approval would mean that “the most important decisions about our economy and society will be taken by the people who care most about Scotland, that is by the people of Scotland.”

“The door will open to a new era for our nation. Scotland’s future will be in Scotland’s hands,” it said. Scottish leaders have already said they want independence to come on March 24, 2016 — a historic date commemorating key steps in the fusion of England and Scotland centuries ago.

The drive for independence has been led by Alex Salmond, the head of the Scottish National Party that dominates the Scottish authority which has its own government and Parliament under longstanding constitutional measures to grant limited powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mr. Salmond called the proposal “a mission statement and a prospectus for the kind of country we should be and which this government believes we can be.”

“Our vision is of an independent Scotland regaining its place as an equal member of the family of nations. However, we do not seek independence as an end in itself, but rather as a means to changing Scotland for the better,” he told a ceremony in Glasgow to unveil the document.

The document said an independent Scotland — a proposal opposed by the major political parties in England — would retain the British pound in a “sterling zone” with other components of the United Kingdom. “The pound is Scotland’s currency just as much as it is the rest of the U.K.'s,” the document said.

That notion was immediately challenged by British politicians who said Scottish leaders could not simply assume that the government in London would agree.

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