YOUR headline on your latest poll (Scotland says No, May 21) fails to do justice to the great majority of Scots who consistently reject separatism. Your poll surely was a signal of the endorsement of the majority of our people of the benefits for Scotland of maintaining a strong Scottish presence in the Union while also asserting the need and right of Scotland's people to have an effective Parliament at Holyrood.

Far from your poll being simply a ''No'' to separatism we are still hearing in its results the shouts of ''Yes'' to the dramatic changes for Scotland and Britain as a result of the real polls last May and last September.

Many Scots will have shared my experience during the dreadful years of the Thatcher and Major Governments: of almost never describing myself as British. Many of us felt we were living under a neo-colonial administration that knew little about us and cared even less.

At times, it seemed as though Thatcher and her crew had almost privatised the very notion of Britishness. It was deliberately reduced, for cynical political ends, to a form of Little Englanderism such that it conjured up images for many Scots of drunken Estuarine lager louts in Union flag T-shirts spouting xenophobic hatreds and the pettiness of outlook which lay at the heart of Thatcherism. I certainly wanted no part of that for my family and me.

Things thankfully have moved on for Scotland and the rest of Britain. The advent of a Government committed to the democratic reworking of the constitutional arrangements of the whole kingdom offers the prospect of a redefinition of modern British identity and citizenship and has given people like me cause to reflect on what it means to be Scottish and British (and also European!).

I trust that, as suggested by your poll's results, in the coming years we will see even more evidence that the great majority of Scots welcome the benefits and challenges of dealing with all three identities.

A catalyst might even come from public reaction to the sentiments increasingly expressed by some elements within the separatist camp. The crude differentiation made by George Gebbie between ''Unionist leaderships'' and the people of Scotland (Scottish politics on shifting ground, May 21) was an example. He forgets that Donald Dewar and Jim Wallace lead parties still supported by the majority of Scots.

Our collective alarms should start sounding when elements in one political party seek to cloak themselves exclusively in the language and symbols of national identity. We previously have been down this road!

This current unpleasant strategy of some nationalists - separating Unionist ''goats'' from Scottish ''sheep'' - is both despicable and dangerous, suggesting as it does that there is something un-Scottish in not embracing separatism. I reject that suggestion as do most Scots. Come next May Mr Gebbie and his chums will learn that lesson yet again.

Brian Fitzpatrick,

24 Dalziel Drive, Glasgow.

May 23.