Army of criminals

Stephen McGinty's Feature "The other Tartan Army" (11 August) left me feeling rather perplexed, not to say nauseated.

Here was I believing that Scotland, and, indeed, every other western European nation, was anti-Communist and yet here was Stephen McGinty, the latest author to lend his skill to a worrying trend of revisionist propaganda, holding up Stalin's "useful idiots" as heroes.

The fact is that the 549 Scots who joined Stalin's 35,000-strong International Brigade to participate in the invasion of a sovereign nation were guilty of breaching international law.

Those who survived their revolutionary escapades in Franco's Spain should have faced trial and imprisonment on their return for aiding and abetting by far the greatest butcher the world has ever seen.

MARTIN BLACKSHAW

Glen Road

Livingston, West Lothian