In 1974 the UK Tory Government under Edward Heath commissioned a report by Treasury department civil servant Gavin McCrone, asking him to look into the economic viability of an independent Scotland. His findings were incendiary, and after Heath left office the McCrone Report was classified as secret by the incoming Labour government under James Callaghan. The report's conclusions were so dangerous that it was designated secret and hidden for thirty years before a Freedom of Information request forced the UK Government to reveal its contents.
Newsnet Scotland has copied the entire report, together with an introductory letter written in 1975 by its author Gavin McCrone, and published it that Scots may read for themselves how successive Labour and Conservative Governments hid the truth for decades.
Publication of the McCrone report by Newsnet Scotland follows an admission by former Labour Chancellor Denis Healey that the Labour Government of the 1970s deliberately hid the true value of Scottish oil in order to thwart support for the SNP. As an introduction to the McCrone report, Newsnet Scotland has published a short video (above) - narrated by actor David Hayman - which summarises the report's conclusions.
"It must be concluded therefore that large revenues and balance of payments gains would indeed accrue to a Scottish Government in the event of independence...Undoubtedly this would banish any anxieties the Government might have had about its budgetary position or its balance of payments. The country 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."(The McCrone Report, 1975)
Download PDF of full McCrone Report HERE
Or read the Report online on the Newsnet Scotland site:
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Note also the following map based on UK Gov (Whitehall) plans in 1976 for re-zoning the North Sea to deprive Scotland of its assets:
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| (Image: The Times) |
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Note also the following information from the Office for National Statistics: Wealth of the Wealthiest in Great Britain, 2008/10:
For broader context of above graph, please see following YouTube (3:46 mins) -
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