Painful truths and Brigadoon

AS RON Laidlaw (Letters, 14 December) is so familiar with my views during the referendum and my fervent wish to keep the UK intact, I am sure he will not be surprised to learn I stand by every word.

He speaks of “nationwide ­riots’’ in Scotland in 1707. I say again the vast majority of this country, 99 per cent plus, would not have participated in said “riots” and would not even have known they were going on. To conflate a handful of rich men with vested interests and the population as a whole in 1707 is absurd. Most then, as now, we can safely assume would have been more interested in feeding and clothing their families. The make-up of a government and where it sat – and in the election of which 99.5 per cent had no say – would have come at the bottom of their list of concerns, if it featured at all.

I welcome and respect Mr Laidlaw’s views, he is as entitled to his as I am to mine. But he should accept not all of 
us in this country live in a Brigadoon fantasy land. Truth can be very painful.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh