Sectarian matters

The Scotsman reports (10 June) that the Scottish Government minister for community safety, Roseanna Cunningham, states, in awarding grants to groups to tackle “grassroots”  religious sectarianism, that “we are determined to create a  Scotland which is not weighed down by the prejudices of the past”.

Why then does the Scottish Government, in its proposals for an independent Scotland, propose to retain the current UK monarchy with its sectarian religious basis which excludes Roman Catholics and those not in communion with the Church of England from the throne and which requires a new monarch to swear oaths affirming Protestantism and rejecting Roman Catholicism despite the Scottish Parliament agreeing, on more than one occasion, that such  religious discrimination should be abolished from the public life of the state?

Religious sectarianism is not just a problem on some street incidents and football terraces.

It is evident at the highest reaches of the UK state and  the proposed constitutional arrangements for an independent Scotland.

It needs attention there as well as at the grassroots.

Norman Bonney

Edinburgh