JUST a simple thought on the closure or perhaps not of the Ferguson shipyard in Port Glasgow. Over the years the public have been told by the Scottish Government that an independent Scotland would be more equal, however the mechanisms for such a laudable aim have been sadly missing.

It has been argued that nationalisation would somehow infringe on EU free trade regulations. This of course is nonsense – one only has to look at state-supported rail travel in Europe to disprove that point, or the French state-owned electricity company that supplies London’s power.

In relation to equality mechanisms and the Ferguson shipyard, why not consider allowing it to morph into a cooperative with the initial backing of the state? I’m sure some will ridicule this suggestion, but if you look at one example of cooperatives, the Mondragon corporation in the Basque area of Spain. Its history shows that it’s been weathering the storm of neoliberalism since the 1950s and has grown substantially. It now employs more than 70,000 people across a wide range of products.

Yes, some cooperatives go bust, but so do many private companies and the positives around cooperatives are many, not least the absolute involvement of their workforces in decision-making, another way to improve democracy in our brave new world.

Alan Hind

Old Kilpatrick

IN terms of the brouhaha surrounding Fergusons and the Scottish Government at the moment, is it not worth mentioning the Feb 2018 £580,000,000 overspend (so far) on the Trident replacement, for a bit of perspective? And haven’t we built lots of submarines before?

Stephen Henson

Glasgow

I’M just reading Michael Fry’s article in Tuesday’s National (The route may be longer but the FM’s road to indyref2 is the correct path, August 13) and his comments about Donald Tusk not supporting the Catalans because he called the 2017 referendum “illegal” and the EU “is not in favour of rearranging its borders”.

Tusk is Polish! Poland has repeatedly been incorporated into others “empires”. It has been part of Tzarist Russia, then the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany, then the Soviet Union again, only gaining independence since the 90s. And there are other times Poland has been incorporated by others.

Catalonia NEVER willingly joined with the Spanish state, the nascent Spanish Empire. It was invaded and forcibly annexed. As has Poland so many times in the pursuit of empires. Scotland only escaped that fate by the skin of its teeth (see Hamish MacPherson’s article “Separating the Truth from Propaganda” in same edition. Wales didn’t) to be conquered military in the pursuit of the “English Empire” (misnomer “British Empire”).

Surely Tusk should look at his own country’s history and see how nearly many times they nearly became just a region of someone else’s empire!

We should support the Catalans. Some say “ah, we’re different politically – we are a political union, theirs is an incorporating union”. This is an illusion of name only. In reality the difference is not great.

And if we maintain, hopefully, EU membership as an independent country, we must not forget Catalonia. Poland has been there, we in Scotland were very nearly, and in many ways are!

The powerful make the laws and decide what is legal and what is illegal. Though they say “it is illegal” – that does not mean that is right!

Crìsdean Mac Fhearghais

Dùn Eideann

HAMISH MacPherson’s article about John Lamont (The story of the forgotten Scottish space man, August 4) was most interesting and informative. Lamont was indeed a Catholic, as Braemar was predominantly a Catholic town in the 1700s and early 1800s with there being 600 Catholics in that part of Deeside. Nearby Glengairn was largely Catholic with a resident priest until fairly recent times, as were nearby Tomintoul with their Catholic churches – one in the village and another two at Tombae and the Braes of Glenlivet. Catholicism was strong in Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, and still is, as it had the protection in the 16th and 17th centuries of the Catholic Dukes of Gordon.

Other predominantly Catholic areas of the Highlands are in Lochaber, stretching from Badenoch through to Roy Bridge, Glenfinnan, Arisaig and Morar. Inverie, in my lifetime, had a resident Catholic priest, Colin MacPherson, a Gaelic speaker and eventual Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. Mingulay in the Outer Hebrides and Canna and Eigg in the Inner Isles are largely Catholic also. Unfortunately this important aspect of Scotland’s once Catholic past is largely unknown by the majority of contemporary Scots of whatever religious persuasion.

There are now, thankfully, several books on this subject such as The Catholic Highlands and Underground Catholicism, both of which I recommend to those with an interest in pre-Reformation Scotland.

James Cameron Stuart

Falkirk