Letters: Benefits of union

Thanks to all who wrote (Letters, 26 November) in response to my letter on unionism, even if everyone missed the point. I was neither "advocating" nor "justifying" unionism and I didn't even mention poor wee "independent" Ireland.

What I actually said was that the historic verdict on unionism is quite clear. A recent TV programme looked at Uruk in south Iraq, a city of nearly 50,000 inhabitants and the first city in the history of the world. What was most remarkable about it was that different tribes and communities put their differences aside and united to live in a city.

Scotland, too, was formed by a union of many minor nations, Scots, Angles, Norse and so on, each with their own laws, languages and cultures, then united once again in that blessed year of Our Lord 1707 with our even bigger southern neighbour.

The historic progress we've made on our own island is clear and undeniable. During this time we have developed from a backward people, not knowing where our next meal was coming from (two-thirds of the population of Leith died of famine a few years before the Union), to one of the most advanced civilisations on earth.

A country indeed, that despite its own tribulations can lend a very generous hand to its less fortunate, albeit independent, neighbours. Clearly, small, independent nations are at a backward stage of development while large unions include the most highly advanced.

Mind you, grasping at examples of individual small countries which have failed is no more logical than pointing at successes. In logic it is only correct when one argues from the general to the particular.

The fact that the SNP leader delights in perverting the rules of logic and producing illogical examples of successful independent countries ought not to blind us to the fact that his argument for independence is fundamentally false.

ROBERT VEITCH

Paisley Drive

Edinburgh