Letter: Former friends

Tiresome though it may be for anyone to acknowledge ex-SNP deputy Jim Fairlie's latest exercising of his huff with his former friends (Letters, 9 September), he ought to know better than to chastise Alex Salmond for putting on ice an expensive referendum in the middle of a recession which he hadn't a hope of winning.

Or has Fairlie forgotten already the 1979 debacle and what happened to the SNP as a result:a decade in the wilderness, until a certain Alex Salmond came along? Good politics is the balancing of idealism with pragmatism. To do so successfully is difficult, to do so over a prolonged length of time near impossible, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Gustav Stressemann being one of the celebrated few.

It's Stressemann we thank for the term "realpolitik" - junking political posturing in order to deal with the realities of a problem. Look no further that Mr Fairlie welcoming in Maitland Kelly and the rest of Siol nan Gaidheal into Fairlie's Free Scotland Party, having campaigned so hard when SNP deputy leader to have them proscribed and their members expelled, because no one else would join him.

Mark Boyle

Linn Park Gardens

Johnstone, Renfrewshire

One has to wonder what the unionist (let's be honest - English) parties are so terrified of if an independence referendum was to be carried out.

If support for independence is as scarce as they maintain, what is there to worry about? A referendum would show that up for what it is. Maybe they don't fancy the thought of going back to their former lives as schoolteachers and shop stewards. Perish the thought.

Barry Lees

Denholm Street

Greenock