TOMMY Graham, MP - ``What we want is stones for building houses'' - must be principal contender for the word-bite of the year award at the next Westminster boys' night out, although his utterance on the Stone of Scone really epitomises the simplistic way in which Labour, bold old and new, attempt to cynically dismiss the deepest aspirations of the Scottish people.

As a young schoolboy I attended a packed and emotional meeting in the former St Andrew's Halls, Glasgow, in 1951, which was being addressed by two of the people who had removed the Stone, and there was rapturous applause as the Saltire which had covered the stone was unfurled.

At that point the Stone had been hastily returned to London, as we understood at the time on the insistence of King George VI, who apparently saw its removal from Westminster Abbey as a dreadful omen for the House of Windsor.

There was no minimising or trivialising the Stone then, and it was only after the humiliation of its return to London that stories of forgeries and mocking songs such as The Wee Magic Stane began to appear.

The present Stone is a potent symbol of English claims to the domination of Scotland, although it is extremely unlikely that the patriotic Abbot and brothers at Scone would have handed over the symbol of Scottish nationhood to a detested and despised foreign invader.

Indeed there may be considerable truth in the claims that the iron rings on the Stone are due to the fact that it was the cesspit cover at the Abbey, and as an unforgiving republican and nationalist I freely confess to taking many moments of quiet delight at the poetic justice contained in the possibility that generations of English and British monarchs have been crowned while sitting on the medieval equivalent of a lavatory-pan lid.

Alan Clayton,

80 Garnie Avenue, Erskine.