THE local Bishopton Labour Party has written to the Defence Secretary, George Robertson, to complain about the proposed closure of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Bishopton with its subsequent loss of 300 jobs. It is unusual to say the least that we find ourselves at one with the Tories and the SNP in opposing the plant closure.

Annabel Goldie, Deputy Leader of the Scottish Tory Party, who lives less than a drive and a wedge from the factory gates, refers in her letter (January 7) to the odd whiff emanating from the factory. But this is nothing to the smell that resulted from the sale of this vast area to British Aerospace in 1988. The local Labour Party knew then that this would result in a reduction in the workforce from 2500 to its present level of 300 in cost-cutting programmes, and the eventual closure of the factory when the MoD found a cheaper option from abroad (in this case South Africa) to supply essential defence components which management failed to identify the need for at Bishopton.

Already there seem to be moves afoot to close the factory, decontaminate on the cheap, and allow BAe to make a vast profit on its initial investment.

An even worse scenario would be that Renfrewshire Enterprise would pay BAe to purchase some of the land, ostensibly to create jobs, and convince the Government to subsidise it by meeting the cost of decontamination. Or am I just imagining things? This isn't a whiff - it's a stench!

John Doherty,

Secretary, Bishopton Labour Party,

1 Teviot Drive, Bishopton. January 8.

ANNABEL Goldie is absolutely right to question the proposed closure of the ROF Bishopton and the rationale for it (January 7).

However, what is breathtaking is her concern about our country's dependence for future supplies on external producers. Under her Government there were unprecedented job losses in the defence industry. And could she explain her Government's rationale for allowing our other indigenous industries such as steel, coal, shipbuilding, and textiles to die? These industries were destroyed with the result being record imports of the products once manufactured in this country and the consequential impact it had on their communities.

Jim Sheridan,

Chair, Erskine and Inchinnan Labour

Party, 31 Park Glade, Erskine. January 7.

YOUR editorial (January 6) thought back to the Garscadden by-election by reminding us that the, then, SNP candidate and pacifist, Keith Bovey, who was opposed to nuclear weapons, ''would have closed Yarrows' shipyards''. I remember the Labour candidate, Donald Dewar, claimed that if Mr Bovey were elected Garscadden would lose Barr & Stroud, Singers, Goodyear Tyres, and United Biscuits. Mr Dewar was elected and Garscadden lost Barr & Stroud, Singers, Goodyear Tyres, and United Biscuits.

Barr & Stroud (Scottish capitalists) was taken over by Pilkingtons (English capitalists) and run down. When Pilkingtons was in danger of being taken over by a French firm the patriotic British press cried ''foul'' agin Johnny Foreigner.

As a former employee (and shop steward) of Pilkingtons' fibreglass factory in Possilpark, a run-down district now famed for its ''Possil sweeties'' (Temazepam), I cannot remember the same press being concerned when Pilkingtons moved the factory down to England, in 1969, in ye olde traditional British manner, throwing 600 workers out on the stones. Come to think of it, I cannot remember any of the famed British working-class solidarity when the English shop stewards in St Helens telt us that it was ''every man for himself'' and accepted the removal of the factory down to England without a murmur.

None of the 57 Varieties of English ''left'' groupies and paper-sellers who stood outside our factory gates during our six-week strike for better wages, conditions, parity with our fellow English workers and against the undemocratic bosses' ''sweetheart union'', the GMBU, and their slavish support for Labour's anti-worker pay freeze, humorously termed ''In Place of Strife'', stood around or supported us against the closure. At that time the full-time GMBU officials could not be elected, nor deselected. Not one of the English middle-class, ''Workers'' this, or ''Revolutionary'' that, group called for the English workers to black the machinery, plant, and contracts moved south. Nor have they ever done so during the whole anti-Scottish asset-stripping policy this century, that Joe Stalin would have been proud to emulate in any of his satellite colonies.

Any of Blair's Bombers who still call themselves ''socialist'' can only be equalled in cheek by Blair's Defence and Foreign Meenisters, George Robertson and Robin Cook, who once campaigned for the SCND against HM's English nuclear arsenal, dumped in Scotland about 20 miles up the road from The Herald office. Another fine ''socialist'' policy?

Donald Anderson,

22 Southampton Drive, Glasgow.

January 7.