Far from all right

As a former SNP parliamentary candidate at both the October 1974 and May 1979 general elections, I must take issue with A J Morison’s suggestion (Letters, 12 August) that back in the 1970s the party was “right wing”, thereby perpetuating the “Tartan Tory” mythology of our Labour opponents.

The reality is that throughout that decade the party leader, the late Billy Wolfe, was a staunch CND member and in 1971 was a prominent supporter of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in, led by the then Communist shop steward, the late Jimmy Reid, who, in the closing years of his life actually joined the SNP.

At the October 1974 election, the party’s manifesto – largely crafted by an ex-Labour Party member, George Reid, elected in February as SNP MP for Clackmannan & East Stirlingshire, promised inter alia to “make war on poverty” with the assistance of North Sea oil taxation revenues.

While it is true that after the party’s disastrous performance at the 1979 general election, when we lost nine of our 11 MPs, there was a move among the younger element – including a young firebrand called Alex Salmond – to move the party further to the left than it actually wanted to go.

The idea that we were then merely a bunch of incorrigibly right-wing tartan romantics is without any genuine foundation.

IAN O BAYNE

Clarence Drive

Glasgow