A YEAR past November, I called into a bookstore in Princes Street to

snaffle up some early Christmas presents.

Confronting me were two displays -- one of the newly-released Downing

Street Years, selling at #25, and one of the Kama Sutra reduced to clear

at #5.

Apart from pondering what sort of society we live in when you can get

five copies of the Kama Sutra for one Margaret Thatcher, it occurred to

me to ask the staff who was responsible for the juxtapositioning of the

displays.

They confirmed that the Kama Sutra was outselling the former Prime

Minister -- whose memoirs had sold but one copy. The Kama Sutra had sold

substantially more and not all to Members of Parliament. Then a young

lady explained the presentation.

''I just thought that if people were in the store reading the Thatcher

book and any of their friends or neighbours came in, they could quickly

move over and pretend they were looking at the Kama Sutra!''

I wasn't the guilty party who bought either book, but contented myself

with the newspaper serialisation of Lady Thatcher.

Within the text, I found one surprising piece of common sense and

wisdom about Scotland.

It was the section in which the former Prime Minister faced the

possibility of what her response would be to a vote for Scottish

independence. It is a clear, dignified and principled position.

''As a nation, they (the Scots) have an undoubted right to

self-determination; thus far they have exercised that right by joining

and remaining in the Union. Should they determine on independence, no

English party or politician would stand in their way, hower much we

might regret their departure.''

It was rather more clear and more dignified than anything she had said

while in office, and it started for me a 14-month paper chase as I tried

to get the present Prime Minister to endorse the wise words.

My first ''Dear John'' letter received a pretty frosty response. He

referred me to a much more equivocal statement that he had made in the

White Paper on the ''Taking Stock'' exercise.

By October of last year at Prime Minister's Question Time, he was

employing the near-nuclear deterrent of telling me to read through his

speeches from the 1992 campaign

Steeling myself to that task on November 9, 1994, I sent him some

relevant passages of his speeches which seemed to touch on the right of

the Scottish people to self-determination. For good measure, I asked how

he could apparently and rightly preach the principle of consent in the

Province of Northern Ireland while denying it to the nation of Scotland.

By December 12, his replies were becoming more and more detailed.

There was still, however, no straight-forward confirmation of the key

quotation.

Then at last the breakthrough. I wrote a further letter in response to

his New Year broadcast, picking up on the point that he himself had

challenged Tony Blair on how Labour would react to an SNP majority in

any future Scottish Assembly. Once again I asked him to endorse the key

Thatcher quotation.

Back came a terse almost petulant answer, but one which finally

accepted ''my position is essentially the same as the passage you quote

from Lady Thatcher's memoirs.'' He added that there would be no further

amplification.

No further correspondence is needed. As someone once said, I have

''game, set and match.'' For the faint hearts and doubters, there is

finally an acceptance from a sitting UK Prime Minister that all Scotland

needs to do to achieve independence is to vote for it.

This view is roughly that which is becoming clear from the first

opinion surveys south of the Border on the Scottish issue which show the

majority of English people substantially more supportive and enlightened

about Scottish ambitions than many Scottish, but Westminster-based,

politicians.

If offers Scots the political opportunity to face our own

responsibility to change our own circumstances without any alibi that

somehow the ''nasty'' English won't let us. The decision is ours and

ours alone. There is no big bad wolf hanging over Scotland.

Now I've finally got one unionist party leader on side on

self-determination there remains the other one. Which is why I'm lifting

up my pen again this morning and to begin a note ''Dear Tony.''