Letters to The National: The deluded Tories are still toxic in Scotland

Earlier this year we were told by senior Tory figures that the General Election would see three Tory MPs returned north of the Border. The one seat held prior to the election was retained by fewer than 800 votes and the vote share slumped to 14.9 per cent, a drop of just under two per cent on the 2010 election. To put this into perspective, it is the worst result ever for the Tories in a General Election in Scotland, symptomatic of continued Tory decline north of the Border.

Indeed, the Tories last week lost one of their few councillors in a by-election in Aberdeen that saw the SNP triumph.

The Tories have made little headway in Scotland as their brand is still a toxic one, pure and simple – a point recognised by Murdo Fraser, who in standing against Davidson for the leadership in 2011 acknowledged this and called for the party to be disbanded and started again.

For Davidson, failure to improve on the 2011 election result will provide further evidence of the continued decline of the Scottish Tories, a party which in their current form are on life support and are self-evidently failing to engage the Scottish electorate.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

WATCHING the Chancellor’s entrance and speech to the party faithful in their northern powerhouse of Manchester takes me back a few years to a certain Labour conference somewhere else in England.

The icy stare that Cameron gave his Chancellor from his seat among the other party minions reminded me of a certain power struggle, not unlike the one Blair gave Brown.

Are we witnessing another night of the long knives? Time will tell. And if we do see another such a power shift within this Tory government, then those that find themselves struggling now had better hunker down for even worse times to come.

Bob Harper
Anstruther

IT never fails to astonish the depths to which the UK press will sink to support Unionism. The referendum was a template for how to “trash” a legitimate movement which was attempting to win independence by completely peaceful means, but the complete abandonment of any journalistic integrity over the Michelle Thomson “affair” is a sight to behold , particularly by the so-called “quality press”.

The level of coverage devoted to this “story” has completely overshadowed minor stories such as the Syrian civil war, the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and the continuing attack on the poor by the Conservative government as it meets for a back-slapping, champagne-swilling soiree in Manchester.

Fewer people in Scotland are buying newspapers than ever before. It is not difficult to discern why.

Where was this intensity of scrutiny in the actions of Jimmy Savile or the child abuse allegations at Westminster?

It must be difficult for many decent journalists working for the present crop of newspapers to uphold their standards when pressured to take a particular view over a story. Some, of course, need no urging to display clear prejudice in their columns.

James Mills
Johnstone

OH, how depressingly predictable. Russia raises the military stakes in Syria by a fair few notches in order to prop up their failing client Assad, and right on cue there’s correspondence in The National about how it’s really all the fault of those dastardly Yankees (Letters, October 3).

The RAF kill two UK-born jihadists in a drone strike and there follows a public outcry, yet Foreign Minister Lavrov blithely announces in a press conference that Russian intervention in Syria is intended to wipe out several thousand of his fellow citizens (mainly Chechens) and no-one apparently raises an eyebrow.

The origins of the Syrian conflict are complex. Yes, there has clearly been fallout from the illegitimate second gulf war and its woefully mismanaged aftermath. But it is hardly progress to be heavily militarising support for a vile war criminal like Assad. If we in the West are being hypocritical, it is only because we would really rather leave most of the nasty work of tackling Daesh in Syria to the Russians and Iranians, while we hold our precious noses and look the other way.

Yes, it certainly ought to be the United Nations that should intervene in this grim fandango, but too often in the recent past (eg Bosnia, Rwanda) it has proved utterly inadequate for the task. One suspects that calls for its involvement are often deliberately disingenuous, a convenient fig leaf for selfish isolationism.

Is it too much to ask that our attitude to foreign affairs should be securely grounded on fair-minded principle rather than merely an opportunity for absurdist political point-scoring? Are we not in danger of forgetting those at the very heart of the matter, the vast majority of ordinary Syrians whose modest ambition was simply to live their lives in peace in their own homes, free from any fear of arbitrary detention, maltreatment and death at the hands of any self-appointed Baathist thug or Islamist zealot?

Robert J Sutherland
Glasgow

PRIME Minister David Cameron’s recent visit to Jamaica may not have generated the publicity he was hoping for, but it was quite helpful in revealing his refusal to consider UK reparations to Jamaica for past involvement in slavery. Pity that, considering his own family’s benefit from slavery to the tune of £3 million payment for the loss of slaves.

Professor Geoff Palmer’s suggestion of developing a Scottish/Jamaica Project in the way that the Scottish Government has developed its historic links with Malawi seems to me a very practical and positive idea. Just as the links with Malawi had their roots in Empire and missionary activity, a similar Jamaica project could well develop educational and health links that could produce better long-term benefits, than a one-off payment to salve the uneasy conscience.

I also believe that there is a case for considering the setting up a Scottish Slavery Museum that could include information about the many Scottish victims that were sentenced to years of indentured labour in the Colonies in the 18/19th centuries.

This is not to diminish the horrors of the Jamaican slave plantations but to widen the parameters of that history. Liverpool has developed a marvellous museum about slavery that is always full of school children and tourists from all over the world.

It would be an opportunity to bring together exhibitions of some of the paintings and artefacts of the Glasgow merchants of the wealthy tobacco families, from Jamaican plantations and mansions across Scotland that were built on the profits of slavery.

There are many ways to develop an anti-racist, diverse, multi-cultural, multi-faith Scotland. A project of this kind could add to this process by acknowledging these shadows from the past and developing a creative and positive narrative for our future.

Maggie Chetty
Glasgow

IS it just me, or was a main plank of the Better Together campaign a scaring of Scottish pensioners to vote No because the SNP were bad and pensioners would suffer if Scotland gained independence?

Fast forward 12 months from Better Together lies and we have Conservative Liam Fox at Tory Conference advocating the slashing of pensioner benefits immediately.

So is it not time for any decent human being in Scotland to reassure pensioners that the SNP Government have already put in place laws to save Scots from the worst ravages of the bedroom tax; the SNP Government are putting in place laws to protect the disabled and vulnerable from Iain Duncan Smith’s deadly welfare cuts. Therefore it is reasonable to let Scottish pensioners know they have been lied to by the Tory elements of Better Together and are in line for deadly cuts.

Alastair Stewart
Hamilton

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