Letters: Playing nice will not take us closer to independence

I am doubtful about a number of claims in her recent article (Support for People’s Vote could actually drive No voters to back independence, November 1). Building a consensus with British progressives will not win Scotland independence. To be blunt, they will appear to agree with Scotland to get our votes back (witness Jeremy Corbyn’s new-found love affair with nationalisations he will never have to implement because he will probably never get into power). And only a few years ago, Ireland was mired in austerity being “supported” with EU bail-outs which led to a generation of young people leaving the country, some never to return.

It is very risky for the SNP to support the so-called “People’s Vote” on Brexit (isn’t a people’s vote what they used to call a referendum, like the EU referendum in 2016?). In supporting a rerun of 2016, we would be making Scotland a hostage to a confirmatory vote after any successful future indyref. So that’s 25 years we are “allowed” another referendum in the first place, and how long after that for a confirmatory vote? We would be tied up for years. And as for Scotland “being on the winning side, or failing that, the socially just side”, that isn’t going to win us independence either. We are socially just now, and still trapped in a neoliberal nightmare that we are powerless to escape. Being glorious, honourable losers keeps Scotland in its place.

Even if we were to make support for a confirmatory EU vote conditional on an absolute guarantee of respecting Scotland’s EU vote, how exactly would we enforce that, given that the UK Government has categorically stated that no region of the UK can have a separate relationship with the EU, unless it suits the UK Government, for example as with Northern Ireland, London or Gibraltar?

They reneged on confirming Scotland’s Parliament as being permanent in nature, so clearly have utter contempt for Scotland (and also Wales, and a bit less contempt for Northern Ireland because they need their votes). And as for anything showing No voters why we should quit the “duplicitous union”, sadly I have found that many people continue to support the Union unflinchingly, and don’t reflect on how disrespected Scotland is, or just don’t care.

Nicola Sturgeon acting like the grown up in UK politics is going to get the independence movement precisely nowhere, as is the Scottish Government “doing the day job”. Maybe we need someone alongside her to be the more maverick voice of independence, probably not a politician.

How far has being sensible got us, or getting all the answers right on currency or anything else? People now switch off from traditional politicians and don’t really care to query too much. Lesley

may believe that Nicola Sturgeon’s measured approach has won over No voters, and that may be true to an extent, but if she is not careful, she will also lose Yes voters, many of whom are not all that enamoured of the EU, to say the least.

We already have a triple mandate for a referendum, a pro-independence majority of Scots MPs at Westminster and a pro-independence majority at Holyrood. How much more do we need? If we run the 2021 election on the basis of it being a vote to deliver a mandate for independence, what’s the betting the Unionist parties would unite and carve up seats just to stop the Nationalists winning?

After all, their policies are more or less indistinguishable from each other, and they seem to love the Union more than they love Scotland, judging by them standing together in 2014 to sink independence.

In previous decades, we would have short-cut to negotiating independence with just one of the parliamentary majorities we have, no referendum. Now it is different, but we do need to call indyref2 for some time during next year, or possibly lose the chance altogether.
Julia Pannell
Tayside

EVENTS at Tynecastle this week indicated that what can be termed Scottish football’s Irish problem is not only present in the Old Firm games in Glasgow but in Edinburgh too, between Hibs and Hearts.

However, any protestations about Scotland not trying to tackle the problem discredits the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act put in place by the SNP Scottish Government in 2011 and scrapped this year when all the parties in Holyrood outvoted the SNP to repeal the Bill. Despite claims by the parliamentary opposition that the Act was ill-drafted and not fit for purpose, they have not come up with anything to replace the Bill and deal with the problem.

Whether the issue is sectarian or racist (Neil Lennon argues it is anti-Irish racism), the non-SNP parties in Holyrood should show the same readiness to eradicate the problem as they showed in repealing the SNP Bill, which at least showed recognition that there is a problem and was an attempt to deal with it.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead

I’VE always thought it will be harder to get a Section 20 out of Westminster for a second indyref than it will be to win the indyref2 once we get it.

One suggestion has been for indy-supporting parties to include a commitment to another referendum in their manifestos. However, winning an election in these circumstances would only give us yet another moral mandate and we already have several of these. (Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will, winning two Westminster elections and getting the majority support for it at Holyrood). Where Westminster is concerned might is right and “moral” holds no sway.

What we need is a mandate which is legally acceptable internationally. The problem is that “legal” at the international level is generally defined by what the UK (the official UN member) says is legal.

One way to get such a mandate, if Westminster says and goes on saying “Now is not the time”, might be for pro-indy MPs to abuse the archaic rules and protocol to disrupt proceedings.

There’s plenty of precedent for this. In the 19th century Charles Parnell famously used this tactic in the cause of Ireland. In 1976 a Tory MP read the London phone book for several hours to cause the first (now largely forgotten) Devolution Bill for Scotland to fail.

More recently Tory David Lidington used the filibustering tactic to deny all the Scottish MPs any say during the ridiculously short 15-minute debate on the UK power grab. The SNP MPs then used the walk-out tactic as a way of drawing attention and protesting against this.

More of all this might be our best way forward if Westminster says “no”.
Mary McCabe
Glasgow

I HAVE long been an admirer of your foreign correspondent David Pratt, who has shown commendable courage by putting his own life at risk when reporting from the front line in the war against terrorists in the Middle East. His latest report on the forgotten war in Syria, however, has given me cause for concern (Why is Syria forgotten?, November 2).

The West, he says, “has conveniently ignored or wilfully pushed aside the hopes of ordinary Syrians of throwing off the yoke of Assad’s rule”. He further says that “many ... among the UK left” are “conveniently ignoring the authoritarianism and brutality of the Syrian regime itself. Better a Baathist despot and dictatorship than a jihadist one, goes their prevailing thinking.”

Really? Mr Pratt is no doubt aware that on June 3, 2014, there was a presidential election held in Syria in which there were three candidates, one of whom was Assad.

The election was overseen by observers from 30 countries, plus delegations from the UN and EU. Assad won 88.7% of the vote, and the observers issued a statement claiming the election “happened in its constitutional time and date in a transparent and democratic way”, was “free and fair”, and held in a “democratic environment, contrary to Western propaganda”.

The day after the election about a million Syrian citizens came out in the streets of Damascus to celebrate Assad’s victory.

I would be interested to hear what David Pratt has to say about this, and why he considers Assad to be a Baathist despot and dictator.
Sandy Cheyne
Newtonhill

DR Fiona Watson’s recent claim that King Robert the Bruce was born in Writtle, Essex, in July 1274 is based on a single source from a chronicler that the historian elsewhere describes as “writing utter drivel”. Writtle may have been his father’s favourite mansion house and that is not in dispute at all. But where is King Robert’s mother in all of this?

In 1980, Scotland’s leading authority on the life of Robert the Bruce, the late Professor G W S Barrow said: “Bruce was born on July 11, 1274, just over 700 years ago, most probably at Turnberry Castle, the caput of the earldom of Carrick.”

When one is considering a person’s place of birth, the location of the mother is what seems to matter most; and when one considers that Robert Bruce’s mother, Marjorie, was in her own right countess of Carrick and her first-born son would be the heir to her earldom, the probability of a Carrick birthplace for Robert seems strong.

Certainly when in 1297, the young Robert Bruce declared to the knights of Annandale “No man holds his own flesh and blood in hatred, and I am no exception; I must join my own people and the nation in which I was born”, and promptly rode off to Carrick to raise his forces against the English, he could hardly have given a clearer indication of his Ayrshire birth.’

The future King Robert was also baptised in Crossraguel Abbey in Ayrshire, shortly after his birth. There may be no direct evidence for a Turnberry birth, but is Dr Fiona Watson suggesting a Writtle birth and then an incredibly arduous journey north from Essex to the south-west of Scotland, with a new-born child, for baptism at Crossraguel Abbey in Carrick? I find that highly unlikely even in the height of summer.
Barry Donnan
Glentrool, Dumfries and Galloway