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WHEN the “top secret” McCrone Report was unveiled in 2005, there was what might be politely described as outrage on the part of independence supporters and a typically insouciant response from the majority of the UK mainstream media, if they responded at all.
It is important to kill a couple of myths about the release of the report in late 2005. For a start, it was not “released under the 30-year rule” as is often stated, but because an SNP researcher Davie Hutchison submitted a Freedom of Information request.
READ MORE: Who was McCrone – expert on the issues of Scotland’s political economy?
Secondly, it was never classed “top secret” but merely “secret”. Gavin McCrone submitted the paper in 1974 for the then Conservative Government and it was then passed to the incoming Labour Government. A top-secret report would have been very unlikely to have been passed on and would still be under wraps in the National Archives.
At any time in the subsequent 30 years, Labour or Conservative ministers could have made it public. You may deduce, therefore, that the governments of Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair wanted it kept secret. It was not just suppressed, it was cast into darkness.
In 2005, after Hutchison brought his findings to the party leadership, Jim Mather and Kenny MacAskill, among others, expressed their anger at its contents.
Recalling those days, MacAskill told The National that only a couple of media outlets went big on the story.
He said: “A lot of our opponents tried to play it down, but to be fair to them the BBC and Herald did not. It didn’t really go big across the UK, it was seen as a Scottish story.”
The then Labour enterprise minister in the Scottish Executive, Allan Wilson, told Holyrood: “It is an interesting period piece.”
Scottish secretary Alistair Darling sneered: “This is typical of the nationalists, looking back to the past. This document is 30 years old.”
In that case, why were they so scared of it, and why did the Unionist parties suppress it and then queue up to knock it?
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