Scots Always Knew We Got Screwed Over Black Gold

Back in the mid-Seventies, oil was discovered off the Scottish coast. Its always been a bone of contention with Scottish advocates of independence that the revenues from that black gold could probably have financed a rich and independent nation. Instead it was diverted to shore up conservative monitarist economic policies throughout the Seventies and Eighties, squandering the wealth of a nation and making a mockery of Little Englander carping that conservative England subsidized the socialist Scots. Nationalists saying such things were written off as being ridiculous for even suggesting them.

Now, we know for sure it was all true, and the bastards buried it.

From the Independent:

It was a document that could 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 thirty years. It revealed how North Sea 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 the British government, 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 FOI rules.

...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.

Because it would have strengthened the independence movement way too much and the English would have lost all that money.

But, oh for what might have been - and what may still be. Even today, it is Scotland's oil that makes the British economy workable. There's still billions in revenue out there beneath the sea. In his pre-budget report, Gordon Brown extracted an extra £6.5b in tax from North Sea oil and gas producers, to be taken over the next three years. Its Brown's success with the economy that has kept the Scottish National Party from eclipsing Labour in polls North of the border.

We were bought and sold with our own black gold.