I WAS moved by Kevin McKenna’s article on the politicisation of the Remembrance ceremonies and reminded of the occasion when I had the great honour of laying a wreath at the War Memorial in Callander.

A leading local Tory told me that she was surprised to see my participation in what she clearly saw as a Unionist celebration. I was not celebrating. I was paying my respects to the shipmates and comrades of my father in the Battle of the Atlantic, of my uncle and father-in law in North Africa and Italy, my uncle in Western Europe, and my great uncle who drowned in the mud on Hill 60.

There should be no implication of imperial grandeur in continuing to mourn the lives that were lost or destroyed by the wars of the last century. I had two wonderful maiden great-aunts who both lost their young men to the blighted memory of Flanders Fields.

By what right do people like the Tories and their Unionist pals lay claim to the poppy?

I do not reject independence by wearing the poppy. I wear it for the victims of UK imperialism. Loyal people sacrificed to imperial ambition. Decent people of my forebears’ generations who sacrificed their youth and vitality to enable us to dwell in the peace and ease which we have, for so long, taken for granted.

Remembrance is not a Unionist monopoly – it belongs to all who served and those who remember and respect their sacrifice.

My mother once said that the war had cost her her youth. I think of that as I watch my grandchildren deprived of the fun of their youth by Covid restrictions and reflect that unlike me, they do not have to carry gas masks nor fear air-raid warnings.

And when they play the Last Post or The Floo’ers o’ the Forest I don’t think of the Union Flag, but of a drifting raft in the North Atlantic or a scrape of dirt in Burma or the desert or a bloodied. flooded shell hole in Picardy.

KM Campbell

Doune

IN my reasonably long life I have always supported remembrance of those who sacrificed their lives for their country, for those of us who followed them. Not this year.

I will hold my thoughts of the sacrifices made dear in my heart, and I will grieve for them.

But there will me no outward show. Why?

Although I regret having to politicise, I have always considered that the sacrifices made by those who fell were from love of their country and the freedoms it afforded. The triumph of democracy over dark forces that would strive to imperil it. That’s what they fought and died for.

Yet today, dark undemocratic forces from the deep state eschew the very democracy that should protect our fundamental rights, and would deny us our right to decide how we choose to be governed.

Alister Jack, the Secretary of State for Scotland, dictates that this Conservative-controlled Westminster Government will continue to refuse a referendum on Scotland’s independence, irrespective of the democratic wish for it at the Scottish elections next year, and will do so for a “generation”.

Based on his inability to define the length or logic of a generation, I realise that we don’t live in a democracy and those who perished fighting for it died in vain. They gave their lives in vain.

The Conservative Party has allowed itself to be infiltrated by undemocratic deep state emissaries, determined to promote unfettered control and exploitation of us by commercial corporations at the expense of the democratic rights of citizens.

I’m sure that each time Jack opens his mouth to deny Scots their democratic right, he merely acts as the best recruiting sergeant the Yes movement could wish for.

The irrefutable reality is that Scotland is an historic nation. We, as citizens, have a fundamental international right to re-establish our Scottish nation as an independent country.

No poppy without democracy.

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh

HEARTBREAK Hotel! It is Westminster’s choice, perhaps, to play that role, but how sad for welcoming Scotland to be forced to become one.

Thank you, John Dennis (Letters, November 7) for letting us know that under cruel new Brexit laws, refugee kids will no longer be allowed to join their parents who are already here.

Another reason to be free to make our own laws – and as soon as possible!

Valerie Waters

East Lothian

QUITE possibly, Boris Johnson’s time will also be coming to an end.

However, I would like to think that the whole of Johnson’s cabinet is numbered. They are all complicit with Trump’s administration, never thinking it would end so soon.

Now it has, and with Brexit looming, it has nowhere to turn, except continually inwards and upwards its own bahookie.

Alan Magnus-Bennett

Fife