I READ your report about the death of Paul Scott (Scottish diplomat may have saved the world during Cuban Missile Crisis, March 19) with interest.

READ MORE: Tributes paid to SNP stalwart who might have saved the world

I knew Paul reasonably well, and after reading his book A Twentieth Century Life, I said to him “I enjoyed your book”, to which he responded “Oh, which one?” Gulp! I had read a few, mainly about the Treaty of Union.

In his autobiography he was very factual about the Cuban Missile Crisis. He had flown into Havana by KLM on the last flight for years – the only other passenger was another diplomat returning reluctantly – and he was greeted with astonishment by fellow diplomats.

Kruschev was having nuclear missiles installed on Cuba, and President Kennedy had put on a naval blockade (there was no American embassy in Cuba and no contacts). They reached an agreement: Kruschev to remove the missiles and Kennedy to lift the blockade. Castro had refused to admit UN observers to monitor the removal of the missiles, but the Americans were not disturbed because their reconnaissance aircraft were keeping a watch on the situation.

However, on the day of the removal there was heavy cloud and the ground became invisible. The British embassy received a somewhat frantic emergency telegram from Washington that the hawks in the Pentagon were becoming impatient, and could we provide hard evidence that the missiles were being removed?

Paul knew where the missile sites were from the American reconnaissance photographs, so he got in his car and drove round, them where he saw the Russians hard at work. He wrote: “In places they were having problems with missile-trailers in muddy fields but they were doing their best. Convoys of these long, sinister trailers were moving to the port of Matanga and the ships were waiting to receive them. It has been said that my report, by calming nerves in Washington, may have prevented a nuclear war”.

Jim Lynch
Edinburgh

THE National shows great generosity in giving so many column inches to one of the Yes movement’s most implacable foes (Don’t believe claims the Morning Star is sympathetic to Putin, Letters, March 19 ). At every opportunity, Conrad Landin, the Scotland Editor of the Morning Star, uses his column to lambast the SNP and all it stands for. Scottish Labour, he appears to think, can still outflank it on the left. Someone should tell him that the Labour party in Scotland has irretrievably lost many former activists and supporters to the Yes movement.

You’d think a socialist like him would welcome Scottish independence. What socialist wouldn’t when you think what Scotland might be rid of – the House of Lords, the English Tory party with its blind faith in market forces, the monarchy and the obscenity of Trident to name a few.

Scotland has been the UK’s fall guy when it comes to weapons of mass destruction. All the more so since, at this juncture, I guess it would be politically impossible to put them anywhere else in the UK. You’d think a so-called socialist like Landin would recognise that Trident explains, in part, the determination of the British ruling class to hold on to Scotland. He boasts that the Morning Star “is the only daily to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership”. I wonder if this means Landin accepts the fact of Trident’s existence and its present location at Faslane. If so, I don’t think it’s very socialist of him.

Alastair Mcleish
Edinburgh

APART from a plethora of corner-cutting arguments by Michael Fry, it is surprising that a historian can so readily dismiss the weight of history in regard to Scotland’s right as to whether it wishes to withdraw from the Union arrangement with England as formalised in 1707 or otherwise (The problem with a snap indyref2 (and a solution for an SNP weakness), March 19).

If the 1707 Treaty of Union has been superseded (as Michael Fry’s comments would suggest) then I for one am surprised that no big deal has hitherto been made of this. I don’t think, despite the slack nature of treaty-making over recent times, that a historical treaty such as that of 1707 would be overturned, or even revised, without some kind of hoo-ha. This aside from the reality that it hasn’t been overturned. The ad hoc arrangement between Scotland’s FM Alex Salmond and UK PM David Cameron that facilitated the 2014 indyref was not of the earnest solemnity and far-reaching intention of the Treaty of Union. The fact that this treaty, however often it has been subject to disrepute, has nevertheless surpassed the span of 300 years illustrates the perspective of such ad hoc and short-term constitutional claims.

Scotland remains an equal partner of a Union that was formed as a partnership of equals. It is puzzling where Mr Fry finds legitimacy for his notion of Westminster holding veto power over Scottish independence. Perhaps he might explain this to those of us who could well qualify for his description as “gung-ho, hell-for-leather” independence seekers?

Ian Johnstone
Peterhead