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Source: Claim of Right 1989

A Claim of Right for Scotland was a document crafted by the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly in 1988, declaring the sovereignty of the Scottish people. It was signed by all then-serving Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, with the exception of Tam Dalyell (Labour), a strident opponent of devolution. The list of signatories included several MPs who would later attain high office, including future prime minister Gordon Brown, future chancellor Alistair Darling, and future leaders of the Liberal Democrats Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell.
The Claim of Right was signed at the General Assembly Hall, on the Mound in Edinburgh on 30 March 1989 by 58 of Scotland's 72 Members of Parliament, 7 of Scotland's 8 MEPs, 59 out of 65 Scottish regional, district and island councils, and numerous political parties, churches and other civic organisations, e.g., trade unions.
Its title was a reference to the Claim of Right Act 1689, an Act of the Convention of Estates of Scotland, a parallel or sister parliament to ‘the Three Estates’. The Act affirmed a fundamental Scottish constitution, declared the requirement for any lawful, Scottish monarch to take the Scottish Coronation Oath, described the existing limits to the power of Scottish monarchs and offered the Scottish Crown to William III and Mary II on these terms. As the Claim of Right Act also deposed a king, (James VII and II), and with him the Three Estates, (legislative Parliament), its reference to the Convention as representing the Estates (communities) of Scotland, “assembled in a full and free representative of this Nation” and acting as “their ancestors in the like cases have usually done for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties”, means that it enacted the sovereignty of the people over a monarch and his parliament. For this reason the 1989 Claim of Right consciously echoed this 1689 Act. By contrast, the English Bill of Rights, also passed in 1689, limited the power of its monarchy by transferring the authority of the monarch to the parliament, inaugurating what is now known as the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.
In October 2011, the Scottish Government announced that the Claim of Right would be brought before the Scottish Parliament to allow MSPs to re-endorse the claims of the sovereignty of the Scottish people. The Claim of Right was debated in the Scottish Parliament on 26 January 2012.