Honourable past

I note the Rev Dr John Cam-

eron’s astonishing statement that the post-1945 SNP “struggled to shake off its association with the nationalist parties of Europe in the 1930s.” (letters, 27 June).

The SNP was founded in 1934 and operated as a democratic party seeking national independence. During the Second World War Labour/conservative/liberal political truce, the SNP received 38 per cent of the vote in the Argyll by-election (1940),41 per cent in Kirkaldy Burghs (1944) and won the Motherwell by-election with 51 per cent of the vote in 1945.

Fascism, to which I presume the Rev Dr is referring, was the preserve of British nationalism – as in Moseley’s Blackshirts and, later, the National Front and BNP.

The only Scottish politician interned during the war for extreme right-wing, Hitlerite sympathies was a Tory MP for the Borders. Scottish Home Rule/independence has a long and honourable pre-war history, supported by Jimmy Maxton, tom Johnston, the Rev James Barr and John Maclean, TOM JOHNSTON Burn View, Cumbernauld