YES activists gathered outside the Supreme Court as the hearings on a second independence referendum got underway inside.
Protesters with the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) travelled down from Dundee to London to gather outside the court and said the decision on whether indyref2 could go ahead should be taken by the Scottish people, not judges.
The group were accompanied by Scots living in London and others who joined their demonstration as they led chants of “hey hey, ho ho, the British state has got to go” on Tuesday morning.
"Let the people decide!" Independence campaigners are targeting the Supreme Court indyref2 case hearing in London pic.twitter.com/s4AgHbWXLS
— Laura Webster (@LauraEWebsterr) October 11, 2022
RIC is a left-wing group that supports an independent Scottish republic and a break from right-wing Tory policies.
Connor Beaton, a spokesperson for the organisation, said: “We thought it was very important to be here outside the Supreme Court because it’s deciding on Scotland’s future and the point we wanted to make was actually it shouldn’t be up to judges to decide Scotland’s future, it should be up to the people of Scotland.
“Obviously we don’t know how this court case is going to go but we believe that Scotland has an inalienable right to self-determination and we do want to see the Scottish Government, the Scottish independence movement and the grassroots continuing no matter what the courts say, to push the fact that it is our decision.
“It’s a democratic issue now I think in the UK and we’ve seen across these islands that there has been a pushback against democracy.
“This Tory government which is led by an unelected Prime Minister who has been put in by a tiny minority of Tory party members.
"We’ve got an unelected head of state being foisted upon us with no debate about republicanism, which we think is a really important debate to have.
“Now we’re seeing crackdowns on the right to protest, we’re seeing crackdowns on the rights of trade unions to organise and to strike.”
He said the group was not only motivated by issues relating to Scotland but by the entire constitutional set-up of the UK at present.
“We want to bring together all the people across these islands, whether they live in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and say that we stand up for democracy and we’ll defend Scotland’s right to choose,” he added.
“I was very pleased to see a couple of Scottish people who live in London, or Scottish people who are in London for the day coming down and joining us.
“We’ve had messages of support from socialists based in England, messages of support from Catalans and it actually underlines how universal the question of democracy and self-determination is.
“It’s not just about Scotland; all the peoples of the world have a right to choose how they are governed. They have right not to have a government that they didn’t elect imposed upon them.”
