ENGLISH Yes campaigners have penned an open letter to their country to dispute any notion that anti-English feeling is fuelling the independence movement.

The statement, by English Scots for Yes, says that people in Scotland want to escape the Westminster regime - and not the English people.

The group has been campaigning to try to win support for independence among the estimated 400,000 people living in Scotland who were born south of the Border.

English Scots for Yes says the independence movement is about democracy for those living and working in Scotland - and not ethnicity.

Today it will continue to highlight its message by holding a tea party event in a layby north of Berwick on the A1, near the Welcome to Scotland sign, which also aims to emphasise the continuation of the ­"longstanding open border with England" after independence.

The open letter states it wants to address false assertions there is "strong anti-English feeling" in Scotland driving support for independence, that Scotland is a "subsidy-junkie" and that independence will hurt England and Scotland. It states: "As English people involved in the independence movement, we feel we are confident in saying that sentiment against English people has been virtually non-existent in our movement. An independent Scotland would attempt to learn from people in England, welcome people from England, and extend our hand of friendship as equal nations.

"Independence will be good for Scotland, and it will be good for England. Yes voters in Scotland have no bitterness or resentment towards people in England; in fact, we believe the relationship north and south of the Border will grow stronger, as we both treat one another as serious partners and friends economically, socially and politically."

Co-founder Math Campbell- Sturgess, 31, said the group, which was launched in June this year, included a mix of members who moved to Scotland in early childhood and those who came later in life.

"Our message is that it's not about ethnicity. It is about people who live and work here having the best government they can and doing the best with what we have got. We are putting fire to the lie that this is in some way anti-English."

Campbell-Sturgess added the campaign also aimed to dispel any notion that only those born in Scotland should be having their say in the independence debate.

He said: "When we first started, one guy had been here 40 years, his children and grandchildren were born here. But he said he wasn't thinking of voting in the referendum because it wasn't his referendum and he was English - but he has been here longer than I have been alive."

Campbell-Sturgess, who is also a SNP councillor for Greenock, is originally from near Cambridge and has been living in Scotland since 2000.

While acknowledging that it is impossible to deny anti-English hostility can exist, Campbell-Sturgess said he had never encountered any - apart from football-related "banter" - until he started the group.

Since then he said he has encountered some abuse, been called a traitor and even had death threats from the No side on social media. But he is keen to downplay this, saying he did not believe it represented core activists in the No campaign, dismissing it as "nonsense". He runs the group - which has around 20 to 30 activists and just over 700 Facebook supporters - with his fiancée Angel Brammer. She, too, is an English Scot, who was born in Gosport and moved to Scotland as a child.

Brammer, 36, said: "Our hope is what Scotland is doing at the moment is going to be a kind of guiding light for England to take back power for themselves."

Toni Giugliano, Yes Scotland's sectoral groups adviser, said the recent launch of Italian-Scots for Yes meant there were now 50 "grass-roots" organisations in the Yes movement.

He said: "Yes isn't composed of 'nationalists' - it's composed of 'progressives'."