IAN W Thomson (Letters, December 30) reminds us that many Scots retain a strong feeling of Britishness as a legacy of having experienced life in the UK at a time when awareness of the recent world wars was still very real. I know, as we were colleagues for a time, that Mr Thomson and I are of the same generation who grew up in the early post-war years when the political climates north and south of the Border were not vastly different. The balance between the two main parties was similar on both sides of the Border and I probably regarded myself as Scottish culturally but British from an international perspective.
Foreign travel was less readily available in those days and for many had only been experienced through military service. Cold War, Iron Curtain and Spanish Civil War were well understood terms to our generation but have progressively shifted from the news media to the history books of my children and grandchildren. The nostalgic Britishness of my generation has faded and is barely detectable among today’s young working-age Scots, who are more likely to identify themselves as Europeans due to having been familiar with international travel from an early age.
Scots of my generation need to accept that attempting to cling to a British identity for sentimental reasons is a disservice to the young generation who, regardless of the unwelcome Brexit imposed on us by our southern neighbours, clearly regard their nationality as Scottish and see their future as part of a modern, open and independent European nation.
Willie Maclean, Milngavie.
TIM Ryan (Letters, December 30) takes time out from his doubtless hectic life in south-west London to keep us right on the meaning of “independence”, and informing readers that the word carries “unwarranted emotional baggage” for us here in Scotland. On a quick check of the dictionary, how ironic that the first definition of the word I come across is “Not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion”. And some other definitions: “Independence is true freedom to make laws or decisions without being governed or controlled by another country.” “Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory.”
Regarding Mr Ryan’s assertion that Scotland wasn’t “militarily conquered by a foreign power” and gave up its independence in 1707 by “mutual agreement”, he appears totally unaware that there are ways and means for a foreign power to “conquer” a nation other than by the sword. I respectfully refer him to Robert Burn’s account of the most infamous day in Scotland’s history:
What force or guile could not subdue
Through many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor’s wages
The English steel we could disdain
Secure in valour’s station
But English gold has been our bane:
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
Do I get “emotional” about it Mr Ryan? You bet I do.
Dr Jim Macgregor, Dollar.
ALAN Roden is scraping the bottom of the barrel when he holds Nicola Sturgeon as partly to blame for the Brexit crisis, writing that she “sought to capitalise on the chaos by demanding a second independence referendum” (“Sturgeon. Cameron. Corbyn. They are all to blame for Brexit”, The Herald, December 30). I would remind Mr Roden that in the days following the 2016 EU referendum, it was the First Minister, mindful of Scotland’s overwhelming vote to remain within the European Union, who travelled to Brussels for talks with EU leaders, carrying with her the mandate from Scottish voters who had elected her on a manifesto commitment that there would not be another independence referendum unless there was a “significant and material change of circumstance, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will”. I would further point out to Mr Roden that in the interests of compromise and to lessen the effects of the chaos about to engulf Scotland, Ms Sturgeon offered to take a second independence vote off the table if the then Prime Minister Theresa May would agree to Scotland remaining within the single market and customs union; a request which was denied.
Following the result of the General Election, which means that there will not be a second EU referendum and that the UK is definitely leaving the EU, Mr Roden comments that “we will now never know for sure if that is what the people really want”. Well we know what the people of Scotland want, but who in the Westminster Government is paying a scrap of attention to what Scotland wants? No change there then.
Ruth Marr, Stirling.
WOULD it be possible, one wonders, for the administration elected to run affairs in this part of the United Kingdom to concentrate on the NHS and education and other local matters in Scotland, and put aside their obsession with breaking up the UK?
Forget increasing special advisers and PR or the First Minister’s jaunts and TV appearances churning out the same old well-worn grievances, which surely must be boring some of even her most loyal supporters by this time.
Instead let them bang some heads together on the state of our hospitals and education and much else. Total concentration is needed. One eye on Westminster only brings on more of the chaos we witness daily.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh EH6.
Read more: SNP should remember that there are many Scots who deeply value their Britishness
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