IT’S not often I disagree with the esteemed Donald Anderson (Letters, May 16). I will accept that Alex Salmond was wrong-footed by Alistair Darling on the currency issue by not pushing Plans B, C and D, which were in the SNP white paper, although I believe The Vow on the front pages of the media had more effect on the voters!
Don’t forget it was Salmond’s positive-government-results strategy which took indy support from 28% up to 52% with projects like the M74 extension, Queensferry Crossing and Borders Railway being completed mostly on time and within budget, plus the feel-good factor and good organising successes of hosting the Ryder Cup and Commonwealth Games!
READ MORE: Former SNP MP to stand for Alba in new Lothian East seat
Alex Salmond didn’t split the movement – he has been calling for unity of indy movement from the start, but has been brutally honest about real SNP shortcomings since 2015.
The split was more to do with the attempt to eliminate/jail the person the UK fear the most and the control freakery in the SNP, denying ordinary members a say in policy, and their inaction towards independence despite numerous mandates!
This forced many experienced SNP members to leave the party and form splinter groups. Alex was invited to be part of the pro-indy movement and rallied these forces round the new Alba Party, thus avoiding even more splinter groups.
READ MORE: Labour council leader and Alba candidate in spat over election poster
Unlike the Greens, Alba went out of their way NOT to stand against the SNP in the 2021 Scottish election and the entire indy movement was set back a few years when the SNP conned people into wasting votes by demanding second vote SNP as well!
This allowed many more Labour, Tory and LibDem Unionists into Holyrood and created the situation where the SNP were reliant on the Greens for a majority.
A united Scotland is a must, and sadly John Swinney is the latest from the old cabal to move away from this!
Les Mac an Ultaigh
Isle of Lewis
IN blaming Alex Salmond for the split in the SNP, Mr Anderson might as well ask us to not believe our eyes and ignore 10 years of silencing those who would push the party to independence.
The Gender Recognition Reform Act, and nothing at all being done on the supposed main goal, is what split the party. Donald must know that Alba only exists due to SNP can-kicking.
The party insists we must have Westminster “agreement” when in fact, as more Scots are realising, we don’t need it.
READ MORE: Alba Party members approve Scottish independence strategy
Donald is in fact delaying independence by supporting the SNP, and it will be delayed for decades while the SNP wait for an agreement that is never going to come.
Meanwhile Westminster plots against us.
The longer we linger in the Union, the more chance we will end up enemies due to Westminster trying to keep Scots, and our resources.
The SNP are sadly going to have to be taught a lesson by voters unless they get the message and change tactic.
I’ll vote SNP if they can convince me I’m not voting to wait for England to decide.
Too much caution can easily lead to cowardice.
William Robertson
via email
IT takes a lot for me to write in about one of the columns in The National, as I have mixed reactions to many of them but don’t feel strongly enough to make the effort.
Kelly Given got it spot on (Years on, it is plain to see the Nakba never ended, May 16).
My father served in Palestine prior to the Nakba and was appalled at the tactics of the Israeli “terrorists” related to arch Zionist David Ben Gurion, who was the primary founder of the state of Israel and became its first prime minister.
All that has happened to the Palestinian people since 1948 was, in my opinion, set up by the Zionist leadership way before.
Unfortunately, they are still being allowed to carry on with the elimination of the Palestinian people to this day.
John Angus
via email
I AM appalled by the Israeli slaughter of Gaza’s civilian population from the air, but Norman Lockhart’s letter of Wednesday May 17 claiming that a greater tonnage of bombs has been dropped on Gaza than in 20 years of American bombing of Vietnam is staggeringly inaccurate.
Estimates of the Israeli total come in at approximately 75,000 tons, while 75,000,000 tons was the US total – or one thousand times greater. This in turn was twice the weight of bombs dropped by the USA and Britain on Germany in World War Two.
It’s easy to see that even heavy bombing of such a small enclave as Gaza could never be matched by the flattening of Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Erfurt, Berlin and every major city of a large country like Germany.
That notwithstanding, the phrase “shooting fish in a barrel” still applies to Netanyahu’s criminal indifference to Palestinian lives.
Dr David White
Galashiels
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