Letter: What happened to the independence fight?

To paraphrase the late Oliver Brown and with apologies for the grammar, "At the mention of the word 'independence', a shiver ran through the ranks of the SNP, frantically searching for a spine to run up."

My conflicts with the SNP were originally over its commitment to the EU and its willingness to see control, which by rights should be vested in the Scottish people, increasingly passed to the EU.

The Scottish electorate have long since seen through the nonsense of "independence in Europe" and unfortunately the SNP was never required to justify a policy which was an insult to our intelligence.

Having been allowed to slither from under that particular burden, the SNP has gone on to spin "fiscal autonomy" as the equivalent of what used to be know as independence and, for the most part during the past 20 years, the word "independence" has almost disappeared from the party's general literature and completely disappeared from the literature in individual constituencies.

For the past four years, the SNP has promised a referendum, the details of which we were left to guess, despite knowing full well there was no majority for the measure in the Scottish Parliament.

Now even that pitiful nod in the direction of Scottish democracy has been withdrawn and the SNP will now appeal "over the heads of the Unionist parties" direct to the Scottish people at the next Holyrood election.

I am at a loss to know what is worse: the mendacity and contempt for Scotland which is the hallmark of the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems, who will quite happily support referenda anywhere else in the UK on any topic that crops up, or the gutlessness of the SNP for letting them off the hook of their own making. The Unionist parties presented the SNP with the ideal opportunity to skewer them, to highlight their hypocrisy, to force them to justify their contempt for the Scottish people and they threw it away.

The "waste of money" argument would be rich coming from a Labour Party which has created monumental waste for which we are all having to pay and if saving money is so important, there are any number of ways in which this can be done but not at the expense of denying Scotland the opportunity to vote for independence.

If the SNP lacks the courage to face this particular fight, it has no right to ask for our votes to endorse its almost non-existent commitment to its version of an almost non-existent "independence".

Jim Fairlie

Heatcote Road

Crieff, Perthshire

Regarding the letter from Andy MacPherson concerning the now abandoned referendum (8 September): Andy, you must shrug off these time-serving politicians who wish to keep Scotland in "the Union" and really go for independence in the 2011 elections.

Remember, 67 per cent of people south of the Border are wishing you luck, including me,

Stuart Eels

Stickleback Road

Calne, Wiltshire