I commend the SNP for having a structure where rank and file members make and influence policy, and I hope that at their forthcoming policy conference they maintain their policy of non-membership of Nato, an organisation which should have been dissolved at the end of the Cold War.

As Lord Robertson, former Nato general secretary, said in The Herald, for an independent Scotland to remain a member of Nato, it would have to abide by the rules of membership.

Why should Scotland remain a member of a club which states that the use of nuclear weapons is part of its mutual defence structure? We cannot be fully independent in a military alliance which exists to face down a military threat that no longer exists.

Willie Maley,

47 Masonhill Road, Ayr.