The Blatant lies we Scots have been told for decades by UK Governments

[NaRvIcK DeViL]

The Blatant lies we Scots have been told for decades by UK Governments

A Top secret Whitehall dossier which was written over 30 years ago has revealed that Government ministers at the time were extremely concerned about loosing the resources of Oil and Gas from the North sea if Scotland managed to achieve Independence.

So certain information including this Dossier was kept Top Secret at the time to deny the Nationalist movement any fuel for Independence.
The paper was recently revealed and obtained by the Scottish National Party under freedom of information legislation.
It was written by a leading government economist in 1974, it sets out how oil would have given Scotland one of the strongest currencies and economies in Europe.

The report by Professor Gavin McCrone also stated that Scotland would have had "embarrassingly" large tax surpluses.
The report also shows how officials advising ministers about how to take "the wind out of the SNP sails".

Kenny MacAskill, said the report was proof of over 30 years of official lies, cover-ups and betrayal.

He added that it showed how much Scotland would have flourished from the benefit of their natural resource under Independence.

He said that in the 34 years since the report, Scotland has suffered low economic growth and manufacturing decline while at the same time oil wealth had "transformed" Canadian provinces and Arabian shiekdoms.

"Some have chosen when they've discovered oil to make the desert bloom and the tragedy was that in Scotland, the UK Government has created an industrial desert,”

Mr. MacAskill insisted that, with prices rising rapidly, oil was now "on the agenda" and he claimed an independent Scotland "would never be richer".

He added: "I would first of all like to have an apology from the UK Government for blatantly lying and deceiving the Scottish people.

"This is a fundamental lie that the people of Scotland have been spun for 30 years - that we were too wee, we couldn't do it, that the oil was going to run out - when they knew along that Scotland was sitting on a bountiful resource that would have transformed our economy and the lives of the Scottish people for the better."

However Scottish Secretary Alistair Darling has dismissed the document.

He responded by saying: "This is typical, looking back to the past. This document is over 30 years old.

Well Mr. Darling that’s alright then!! I’ll just carry on like the rest of the Scottish people being patted on the head and being told ‘we subsidize you ‘and every now and then being threatened that the Barnet formula is unfair may have to come to an end.

[Scottish_Republican]

i just love the way Scots colonise themselves by claiming that they can do nothing on their own. Time to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves.

[NaRvIcK DeViL]

How black gold was hijacked: North sea oil and the betrayal of Scotland
In 1975, the Government in london faced a dilemma: how to exploit the potential of new oil fields without fuelling demands for Scottish independence. So it quite simply buried the evidence
It was a document that would have changed the course of Scottish history. Nineteen pages long, Written in an elegant, understated academic hand by the leading Scottish economist Gavin McCrone, presented to the Cabinet office in April 1975 and subsequently buried in a Westminster vault for over thirty years. It revealed how the oil could have made an independent Scotland as prosperous as Switzerland.
The Freedom of Information Act has yielded many insights and revelations into the working of government south of the border, but none so vivid as the contents of Professor McCrone's paper, written on request in the dog days of Ted Heath's Tory government and only just unearthed under the Freedom Of Information rules.
Recently Gordon Brown underlined the very lucrative revenue stream that North Sea oil still is in the context of British politics. In the last pre-budget report, the Government extracted an extra £6.5 Billion in tax from Scotlands oil and gas.
Imagine then, what the oil could have done for a Scotland if it had been allowed to choose independence in the mid 1970s and claimed ownership of it’s resources.
Thirty years ago, Professor McCrone answered that very question and his conclusions shocked his political masters.
Although BP first discovered the giant Forties oilfield in 1970 - which by 1977 was producing 500,000 barrels of oil a day, equivalent to a quarter of Nigeria's entire daily production - the real rush for "black gold" had only begun around 1973, when the Yom Kippur War caused a crisis in the Middle East and forced prices up to around $16 a barrel.
By the time the oil companies realised that North Sea drilling was not only cost-effective but very highly lucrative, and the British government realised it was sitting on a gold mine, the Scottish nationalists had already laid claim to the oil.
The "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign began in 1972. If only they had seen the professor's research.
An independent Scotland's budget surpluses as a result of the oil boom, wrote Professor McCrone, would be so vast as to be "embarrassing".
Scotland's currency "would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian Kronor." From being poorer than their southern neighbours, Scots would have become richer.
Scotland would have beeen in a position to lend heavily to England and "this situation would have lasted for a very long time into the future."
In short, the oil would put the British boot, after centuries of resentment, firmly on the foot standing north of the border.
Within days of its receipt at Westminster in 1974, Professor McCrone's document was judged as incendiary and classified as top secret. It would be sat upon for over three decades.
The mandarins demanded that Professor McCrone's 19-page analysis be given "only a most restricted circulation in the Scottish Office because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject." The subject was sensitive alright.
This is a story of Whitehall betrayal that will satisfy the pre-conceptions of the most extreme Scottish anglophobe.
It was the comparison with Norway that particularly worried the Westminster politicians. In the mid 1970s of course, Norway was fully independent and about to take advantage of an oil boom that has generated undreamed-of prosperity to the present day.
In Scotland, the situation was somewhat different, and potentially explosive.
National pride had been hugely galvanised by the appearance of the Scotland Football Team in the 1974 World Cup, a competition for which the England side had failed to qualify.
But economically, the outlook was bleak. Heavy manufacturing, which had been the heart and soul of the Scottish economy for generations, was on its knees waiting for its last death throws.
Between 1970 and 1974 the number of coal mines in Scotland fell by a third, while steel production plunged by a fifth.
Shipbuilding, the mainstay of the Clyde, was in particular trouble. After the Heath government refused to bail out four yards in Upper Clyde in 1971, trade unionists staged a work-in and occupied the yards.
Some 70,000 people marched calling for government help and a 48-hour strike by other workers brought out more than 100,000 in support.
Meanwhile, in politics, the nationalists were riding high as never before. The 1970 general election saw the SNP poll just 11.4 per cent of the vote and one seat. But in February 1974 they scored 21.9 per cent and won seven seats. Within eight months, by the October election of that year, their support had risen to the all-time high of 30.4 per cent of the vote, and 11 seats.
The party was also nipping at the heels of Labour in 34 other Labour-held seats. This was the high tide of Scottish nationalism.
Previously unheard of would-be terrorist cells began to emerge: The "Scottish Legion", "Jacobites", "Border Clan", 'Tartan Army" and the "100 Organisation", which took its name from the famous historic Declaration of Arbroath, stating: "So long as 100 of us remain alive we will never submit to English rule."
American companies based in Aberdeen became nervous that a Scottish breakaway, socialist in outlook, was threatening their personnal interests. Pressure was exerted on the government to control the situation.
Professor McCrone's report, in such volatile circumstances, would almost certainly have provoked a turning point in the history of the United Kingdom.
Billy Wolfe, who was leader of the SNP at the time and the man credited with developing the nationalists as a clearly defined left-of-centre political party, is in no doubt of what the McCrone findings could have meant.
"If that information had been published before the October 1974 election," said Mr Wolfe, "we would have won Scotland and it would be a much wealthier and happier place to live in.
"A whole lot of economic factors would be a lot different, especially in the fishing, steel and shipbuilding industries. It would have been a tremendous boost for Scotland."
Tam Dalyell, who served as Labour MP in West Lothian for 43 years, agrees that the document could have led to independence. "In my view it would have done," he said. "It could have tipped the balance in a number of seats including mine. Oil was very much a totemic issue. It was new and it was dramatic. Politics at that time was very different. In 1974 my majority went from around 6,000 in February to around 2,000 after the October general election.
"It was most unpleasant. People were saying 'it's our oil'."
By the mid 1970s, international convention had already agreed that the North Sea north of the 55th parallel was under Scottish jurisdiction. That meant around 90 per cent of the UK's oil and gas reserves fell within Scottish waters. Such was the fear of the rise of Scottish nationalism that the document remained secret under the governments of Callaghan, Thatcher, Major and even Tony Blair.
Its very existence only emerged when Scottish National Party researchers, thought to be acting on a tip off from a former official, placed a carefully-worded request under the freedom of information legislation.
The Scottish Executive has published its annual Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland analysis, which charts expenditure north of the border.
Statistics for 2002- 03 showed expenditure per head of £6,579 in Scotland compared with £5,453 in England. It also showed that Scotland received £9.3 billion more than it took in taxes. It is an old English nationalist refrain that the Scots are both over-subsidised and over-represented in the British Parliament.