Yes, we’re patriots

A new poll says that the Scots in general and SNP supporters in particular are the least likely in the UK to refer to themselves as “patriotic” (your report, 30 April). It says 82 per cent of Ukip voters and 78 per cent of Conservative voters identify as patriots but only 36 per cent of SNP supporters.

This might come as news to those who last summer watched as first tens, then hundreds of thousands, joined Yes rallies for independence. These culminated in a breathtaking celebration of identity, with a mass of waving Saltires stretching from Edinburgh Castle to the slopes of Salisbury Crags. If that wasn’t patriotism, what was it?

For the research team patriotism is “complicated” by the unique traditions underlying the union of nations and the “uneven sense of engagement” in political processes experienced by citizens. Indeed. The 62 per cent in Scotland who voted to remain in the EU are certainly “unevenly represented” by Brexit. A patriotism requiring unqualified support for a British state synonymous with Westminster is not sitting well in Scotland but recent history offers an alternative vision, not of state patriotism, nor of political nationalism, but of popular sovereignty. The proposed Citizens’ Assemblies will examine Independence and echo the Constitutional Convention that examined devolution in the 1980s. This resulted in the “settled will” of the 74.29 per cent who voted to reconvene

the Scottish Parliament. Moral authority was vested in the convention’s chair, Canon Kenyon Wright. Faced with a recalcitrant prime minister, he asked rhetorically: “What if that other voice we all know so well responds by saying ‘We say No and we are the state?’ Well, we say Yes – and we are the people.” The people can’t answer if the people aren’t asked the question.

(DR) GERALDINE PRINCE Victoria Road, North Berwick