On Monday in Cardiff, a new page was written in the region’s history. The leaders of Ireland, Scotland and Wales signed a joint memorandum, demanding constitutional change to clear the path for referendums on self-determination and independence. The historic document underlines the distinct histories, identities and political traditions of three nations, each with the right to decide their own future.
Call it what it is: a revolutionary act by John Swinney, Michelle O’Neill, Mary Lou McDonald and Rhun ap Iorwerth, of Scotland’s SNP, Ireland’s Sinn Féin, and Wales’s Plaid Cymru, calling on the British government to get ready to plan for, and deliver, constitutional change.
The Irish. The Scots. The Welsh. All picturing a future unshackled from the “United Kingdom,” from Buckingham, from Westminster. A future inside the European Union. A future that finally closes the book on a historic injustice they’ve lived with for far too long.
Plenty of states will be called on to take a position on this coming shift. And Cyprus, with its own history of British colonialism, and its own unfinished business with it, will have a choice to make. Will it stand up for peoples’ right to self-determination? Or reach for imaginary “historical ties” with England that were never really there?
ΑΛ.ΜΙΧ.
