I WAS at a performance last Friday of David Horne's opera, Friend of the People, about Muir of Huntershill, for which Robert Maclennan has written the libretto. Of course, operas are not expected to be historically accurate, but in this one the libretto looks like a deliberate attempt to distort and suppress the truth.
You would suppose from it that all Muir wanted was to extend the franchise of the British Parliament. In fact, he expressed his views at length in a letter to Talleyrand which still exists in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He denounced the Union and wanted Scotland to become an independent republic. Certainly we should, in the words of the song, ''Remember Thomas Muir of Huntershill''; but we should remember him for the right reasons.
Paul H Scott,
33 Drumsheugh Gardens,
Edinburgh. November 22.
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