Scotland's Oil and Unionist Lies

Anyone who has been reading the Scottish newspapers in recent days cannot fail to have noticed the headlines about Scotland's Oil. According to a report written in 1975 by a government economist R G L McCrone and released to Kenny MacAskill MSP of the SNP under the Freedom of Information Act, far from struggling financially under Independence and having a fiscal deficit, Scotland "would tend to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner. Just as deposed monarchs and African leaders have in the past used the Swiss franc as a haven of security, so now would the Scottish pound be seen as a good hedge against inflation and devaluation and the Scottish banks could expect to find themselves inundated with a speculative inflow of foreign funds."

The significance of the existence of this report and the timeframe surrounding it is that it was written at a time when the SNP was dramatically on the up, riding the success of the "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign. It shows the government of the day running scared of constitutional change but most of all, it shows that the Labour and Conservative parties have consistently lied to the Scottish people for a generation. They have denied Scotland had the ability to stand on her own two feet economically. The release of this report has put the lie to everything they have said against independence for the last thirty years or so.

Some telling quotes from the paper:

"Even after its discovery the full significance of North Sea oil...still remains in large measure disguised from the Scottish public..."

"Thus, all that is wrong now with the SNP estimate is that it is far too low; there is a prospect of Government oil revenues in 1980 which could greatly exceed the present Government revenue in Scotland from all sources and could even be comparable in size to the whole of the Scottish national income in 1970."

"North Sea oil could have far-reaching consequences for Scottish membership
of EEC because of the tremendously increased political power it would confer.
As the major producer of oil in Western Europe, however, Scotland would be in a key
position and other countries would be extremely foolish if they did not seek to
do all they could to accommodate Scottish interests."

"This paper has shown that the advent of North Sea oil has completely
overturned the traditional economic arguments used against Scottish
nationalism. An independent Scotland could now expect to have massive
surpluses both on its budget and on its balance of payments and with the
proper husbanding of resources this situation could last for a very long time
into the future."

To those involved in the campaign for Scottish Independence it has come as no surprise whatsoever to have their long held suspicions confirmed in writing.

Gordon Wilson who led the "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign in the late 1970s wrote a letter to the Herald newspaper on this subject. He wrote: "What is now clear is the extent to which Scottish Labour condemned two generations of the poor and current pensioners in Scotland to life on the margins by their complicity in the oil cover-up when the party sided with England rather than Scotland. That is a betrayal without comparison and ought to be punished at the polls."

It's hard to disagree with those sentiments and Labour should be looking at the forthcoming by-elections and Scottish Parliament elections with some trepidation.