No Headline Present

politics''.

That coming era is absolutely new. Never before has there been a legislative Scottish focus for democratic political action. Throughout the evolution of parliamentary democracy in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, Scots have played their part with vigour but have had to focus on Westminster because of 1707. It is almost incredible that we have survived as a national community for these centuries without any semblance of self-government, but the fact is we are still around and thriving.

That a ''new Scotland'' has been evolving in the past 70 years, since the founding of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 (not the cause of the evolution but part of the expression of it), is now obvious - using, as you say, ''handsome dollops of hindsight''.

But people of my generation who have been active in the SNP for 30 years or more, or who have been interested in politics, have been aware of this evolution. One of the more encouraging signs of it happened 30 years ago this week - the SNP scored nearly 40% in the municipal elections of 1968.

That was a direct result of Winnie Ewing's capture of Hamilton from Labour six months earlier. It was like an exceptionally high tide. It receded but its mark remained as an encouragement to believe that it would happen again when the voters had the courage to go for it.

It encouraged the SNP to put into election address after election address, all over Scotland, in every election, messages like: ''The Scottish National Party wants to bring real power back to the people of Scotland. The problems facing Scotland will not wait. Now, more than ever, it is time to go for self-government''. All still true today.

On January 27 last you published a letter from me in which I said: ''A New Scotland is on our doorstep now. 'The cringe' is going! We can do it - be a nation again!'' I did not really expect that to be manifested so strongly so soon, but like share prices, opinion poll levels can fall as well as rise!

William C Wolfe,

37 Woodside Crescent,

Kaimend, Lanark. May 6.

ALF Young's analysis of your System Three poll does himself considerable justice as usual. He is probably right that no-one knows just why erstwhile Labour voters increasingly prefer other parties, until now mainly SNP. However, neither he, the Labour Party, nor indeed any observer of the Scottish political scene should be surprised at this turn of events.

In the run-up to the last but one General Election in 1992, as is the custom, a large number of schools conducted mock elections among the senior pupils, often featuring appearances and speeches by the candidates in the respective constituencies. What took me by surprise was not simply that the SNP won most of these contests overwhelmingly, but that Labour did so badly, in one large Edinburgh comprehensive polling no votes at all.

When I asked my eldest daughter, then in her sixth year, if she had an explanation, she replied, ''Labour is a joke''. Of course, that same perception did not pervade the electorate as a whole, and Labour still went on to win the majority of seats in Scotland in 1992.

It cannot be a total coincidence that the classes of '92 are now all fully-fledged members of the elctorate. Although children do tend to temper their natural radicalism as they grow up, one must toy with the idea that the mass of youthful cynicism accumulated over the years is fast becoming critical and indeed reminding many of their elders of the time when they, too, lived in the hope of a better deal. New Labour might do well to remember, after all, that Scotland is indeed a different country.

Roger T. Knox,

34 Ravensheugh Road,

Musselburgh. May 6.

Instead of setting up a ''Dirty Tricks'' office to halt the rise in SNP support, the Labour Party should listen to what the SNP and the people of Scotland are telling them.

The Scottish people want to break free from the poverty that has given them the poorest health in the western world. They don't want an early grave.

Scottish graduates and school-leavers want the same job prospects that their counterparts in the English Home Counties enjoy. They don't want the ''New Deal'', which is nothing more than a Mark II Government training scheme.They are fed up watching good-quality Scottish jobs being transferred south.

Scottish pensioners want their pensions restored to the earnings link, rather than watch their pensions decrease in value every year.

The Scottish electorate, at last, now realise that Labour, like the Tories, will pander to the decision-makers in Middle England and ignore Scotland's desperate needs.

Tom Brady,

35 Fishescoates Gardens,

Rutherglen. May 6.

WHEN the language of a decent soul such as Donald Dewar becomes intemperate, one can almost hear the Millbank puppet strings vibrate. He charges the SNP with ''astonishing arrogance'' in its insistence on an independence referendum as a prerequisite for any coalition.

Many Scots considered New Labour's insistence on a devolution referendum as astonishing arrogance when the settled will of the Scottish people had already been clearly established. Labour's calculated wrecking action through the 40% rule in 1979 was no less heinous. The SNP is being wholly consistent. To water down its goal of independence or to change its nomenclature would be as craven as a socialist party abandoning its socialism.

What is telling is New Labour's alarm at a referendum. No democrat should fear a referendum. Do they see a referendum as a quid pro quo for independence? A referendum is only a democratic process to establish the wishes of the people. If Mr Dewar and his masters fear one so much, do they view, inter alia, The Herald's System Three poll with more panic than they admit?

Derrick White,

Brounshill, Gifford. May 5.