Root of hostility

Brian Monteith (Perspective, 10 February) is perfectly correct in saying that the future independent Scotland may well vote sometime for a rightist government; but I am not sure that he recognises the point of his own argument.

Independence will give the moderate right in Scotland the opportunity to reform and reorganise itself as the active and progressive political force it was in the distant past.

Is it, perhaps, a well-grounded fear of this that is at the root of our blinkered and hidebound Labour Party’s dogged hostility to independence?

DERRICK McCLURE

Rosehill Terrace

Aberdeen