The Sunday Herald was the only newspaper to call for a Yes vote in the independence referendum, the anniversary of which falls this week. One year on, we are as sure as ever that it was the right thing to do, even though the referendum was lost.

We did not advocate independence for its own sake, as an expression of cultural superiority or as an attempt to cut Scotland off from the world. Rather, it was to promote the ideals of a fairer, more equal society – one which seems increasingly difficult to achieve within the confines of a United Kingdom dominated by the Westminster establishment.

The actions of the Conservative government since the referendum have only confirmed our pessimism about the future of the UK and our confidence that independence must be Scotland's destiny.

The gradgrind economics of welfare reform; the imposition of English Votes for English Laws; the attempt to abolish the Human Rights Act; the narrow hostility to Europe; the lack of common humanity with regard to the refugee crisis. We do not cite these as defects in the English character - they are not - but as defects of a political system which remains inimical to change and alien to Scottish sensibilities.

There was a time when the United Kingdom stood for very different values: the National Health Service, the welfare state, anti-colonialism, internationalism. The European Convention on Human Rights which Tories of today bemoan, was in part drafted by UK lawyers under the guidance of Winston Churchill.

But those days are long passed. It is the UK which now defines narrow nationalism, recoiling from European cooperation and refusing to accept responsibility for victims of conflicts in which we participated, and in some cases started.

The National Health Service is being privatised. Tax credits are being withdrawn from poorer families, while the wealthy are exempted from death duties. Scottish MPs are to be excluded from votes in Westminster. Is this really what they meant by “better together”?

Scotland is a country in its own right and always has been. The Union Treaty of 1707 was between two sovereign nations. Scotland relinquished her parliament but not her national identity or institutions like the kirk, the education system and the law.

It may not have been explicit in the Acts of Union that Scotland had the right to review this partnership. But Scotland is not and never has been a colony of England or the “RUK”. It never relinquished the right to self-determination, the cardinal principle of international law and the foundation of the United Nations Charter.

We believe as strongly today as we did a year ago that Scotland can and must exercise this right to self-determination. To live in the kind of society that Scottish citizens wish to live in, it is necessary to repatriate political and economic authority from Westminster. To halt Scotland's relative economic decline and preserve our interests in Europe, we need the full autonomy that is every nation's right.

Nor do we believe that the negative result in the 2014 independence referendum can be seen as the end of this matter. It is clear that Scotland rejected independence under a form of duress.

The refusal to permit Scotland to continue using the pound, the common property of the Union, was a direct threat to Scotland's economic livelihood. Financial institutions like Standard Life threatened to leave Scotland creating a climate of financial uncertainty.

Scots were told that they might be be denied membership of the European Union, of Nato. The UK-based press egregiously misrepresented independence as a crass attempt to seize diminishing North Sea oil wealth. The BBC's reputation for impartiality was placed under severe strain.

Scots were promised something approaching “devo max” if they voted No, even “near federalism”. But the Smith Commission has been described as a “shambles” even by the former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell. The Scotland Act is at best a damp squib, at worst an attempt at social dumping - forcing Scotland to shoulder the welfare burden of a rapidly ageing population without the growth policies to pay for it.

Any doubts about Scotland's desire for self-government should have been dispelled by the Tsunami general election. The party of independence now dominates Scottish politics with 56 our of 59 MPs in Westminster and an overall majority in Holyrood. Unionist parties have been pushed to the margins.

Another referendum on independence can only be a matter of time, and we are confident that the result will be a resounding Yes. Scotland must prepare the ground now, as the Catalans are doing, for a future as a fully self-governing state. There is work to be done on the currency, debt, defence, relations with Europe and the rest of the United Kingdom.

It is not enough for the Scottish National Party merely to win elections; it needs to update, in the light of experience, the voluminous Independence White Paper of 2013. The middle classes and pensioners have understandable anxieties about financial security which should be addressed.

This need not be a contentious or divisive project, but rather the envisioning of a better nation. Scotland is already “independent in the mind”, as the saying goes. Now it is a matter of making Scotland independent in the real world.