Letter: Scots alienation

What a great synergy was created by the juxtaposition of Gerry Hassan's article and your feature on Jimmy Reid's speech (13 August). The respective subject matters of lack of strategic political vision and alienation are inextricably linked.

Jimmy Reid embraced the SNP quite late in his life, perhaps in frustration at seeing both the Communist and Labour parties failing to deal with the alienation that stemmed from the failure of the British political system to create that inclusive strategic vision.

The dissipation of the early promise of the SNP to create a Scotland for everybody was brilliantly articulated by Gerry Hassan, when he said "this state has produced caution and lack of radicalism in the SNP as they attempt not to make enemies of institutional Scotland".

However, institutional Scotland, if not the problem, is certainly a major part of it. The omelette of a new inclusive Scottish society will not be made without the cracking of a number of "institutional eggs", aye, and egos too.

The kind of alienation Jimmy Reid detested will, as Gerry Hassan indicates, not be addressed by any of the "opolies" and indeed is in large part derived from them.

To crack alienation, we have to crack the worst of these examples: the stifling monopoly that disassociates the people of Scotland from their land and its resources. Stands the SNP where it did?

RON GREER

Blair Atholl

Perthshire