I COULD not fail to notice that immediately next to your Opinion piece today on New Labour's latest hysterical anti-nationalist rantings was a letter from that renowned political free-thinker Brian Fitzpatrick, regurgitating the same, sad, Millbank Towers mantra.

I agree completely with his condemnation of the ''Unionist goats/Scottish sheep'' corollary, but such thinking seems alien to the SNP leadership who have doggedly pursued a positive approach in the face of the most childish abuse imaginable from the Government. However, the ability of the rank and file within the SNP to differ publicly from their leadership, without fearing a midnight visit from the Thought Police, will no doubt be envied by many in New Labour.

Not Mr Fitzpatrick, though. He is a classic example of why New Labour finds itself in such difficulty in Scotland.

He simply cannot veer from the ''message''. The fact that the message is the problem is quite outwith his comprehension.

In the coming months, he and his pre-programmed chums will go to the people of Scotland joyfully proclaiming the benefits of spending millions of pounds on mothballed, utterly redundant Trident submarines. He will sing the praises of a Government which continues to dump nuclear waste on our own disaster in the making, Dounreay. He will attempt to convince us that a Government which attacks single mothers, the disabled, students, and the unemployed is a Government to be proud of. He will seek to justify the ever-lengthening hospital waiting-lists. He will try to explain away their inability to deal with corruption. He will continue to attack those who do not think like him because that simply cannot be tolerated by New Labour zealots.

And next May, when the incompetent, sleaze-ridden, New Labour stranglehold on Scotland has been shattered, he will wonder what has hit him.

Stuart Morrison,

2467 Dumbarton Road,

Glasgow.

May 26.

LABOUR'S Dr John Reid's attack on the SNP is far from accurate in accusing them, repeatedly, of being separatists. He seems to be trying to equate them with this word with the isolationism of the United States after 1918. He must know perfectly well the policy is for independence in Europe, where borders will eventually will be done away with.

Andrew Baird,

110 Hill Street, Glasgow.

May 26.