Letter: Separatists are talking Britain down

Mary McCabe (Letters, 5 April) made an interesting point which I have noticed coming up in correspondence regarding Scotland and the drive by the SNP to tear Scotland out of Great Britain.

This comes down to Britain’s “imagined status” as a great power, as she puts it. I am unclear what this “imagined status” is, except in the minds of those who wish to diminish and vilify our country. It is a fact that Britain is a great power, as we have been involved in trying (not always successfully) to make the world a safer place for centuries.

Millions of people are grateful for the liberation they have experienced thanks to British involvement in their area of the world, whether it be from Somali pirates, the Argentinian occupying army, the West Side Boys in Sierra Leone or from IRA and Loyalist terrorism, to name but a few instances in recent years.

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The basic problem is that those in the separatist movement in Scotland wants to talk Britain down, as Mary McCabe’s letter exemplifies. They know that Britain’s influence in the world is – and always has been – greater than our physical footprint. That is all the more reason for having a justifiable pride in our nation’s positive influence on world affairs.

Please do not allow negativity to tarnish the great efforts we have all made and, indeed, continue to make, to ensure that the world is a better and a safer place.

Those who do so include a very healthy Scots contingent who are keen to do their job for Britain and for Scotland as a part of that greater identity.

Andrew H N Gray

Craiglea Drive

Edinburgh