Scots demand benefits from oil discoveries

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33654, 2 October 1974, Page 23

Scots demand benefits from oil discoveries

I By N.Z..P.A. staff correspondent. DAVID BARBER

GLASGOW. “We're the sheikhs now.” trumpeted a Scottish newspaper recently, reporting the latest North Sea oil find and forecasts that offshore oil would supply all Britain’s needs and leave plenty over for export.

“It’s Scotland’s Oil” claim Scottish Nationalist Party election posters that still hang from walls and windows throughout the land. The North Sea oil bounty promises relief from the huge balance of payments problebs that have made Britain’s economy so sick in recent years. But the finds are just off the Scottish coast, and Scots who have long felt underprivileged and neglected by the central Government are increasingly concerned about getting their fair share of the benefits. The Scottish Nationalist Party, which is demanding self-government, claims: "Everything north of the border is Scottish.” It wants total Scot control of North Sea energy resources, and promises: “We won’t starve England of the oil—we’ll sell it at reasonable prices.” There are signs that the oil is acting as a catalyst for Scottish nationalism. Even those Scots —and there are hundreds of thousands—who

will not go along with i separatism, want some kind of a change and guarantees that all the oil riches will not leave Scotland. OPINION POLL A recent opinion poll published in the “Scotsman”! showed that 66 per cent of) Scots believed that Scotland would “probably get very: little benefit out of the North! Sea oil discoveries—it will all go to the oil companies and the British Government.” Fifty-nine per cent believed i that the oil belonged to Scot- i I land and the tax revenue 1 ' from it should be used to benefit the Scottish people. > The same poll showed that I nearly 80 per cent of Scots! wanted some change in thej sysem of Government to give' them greater control over! their own affairs and what! the “Scotsman” described as! “a dramatic upsurge of sup-! port for the S.N.P. More than 637.000 Scots' voted for the S.N.P. at the! General Election in February, and a member of Parliament, Mr George Reid, says: “As the message of Scottish oil gets across, the people will agree that we have to have self-government. “Scotland will not be mortgaged,” says one of his six Parliamentary' colleagues, Mr Gordon Wilson. “Our country is being take out of our hands by foreign companies.” The Scots are undoubtedly already reaping some benefits from the oil bounty. Thousands of new jobs are being created and are paying top wages, and service industries are booming from the Shetlands to Aberdeen. MORE PROBLEMS I But traditionally. Scotland has suffered rates of un- ! employment, sub-standard [housing and infant mortality well above the British averages. It is these problems that the S.N.P. wants oil revenue to remedy. The Labour Government is studying all financial aspects of North Sea oil and is expected to produce some plan to use a proportion of the profits for exclusive Scottish development. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr William Ross) damns the S.N.P. for dividing the country. “Talk of separation is harmful and economic nonsense,” he says. I Most Government officials

ridicule the S.N.P. proposals, and it is certainly true that the majority of Scots remain loyal to Britain and would not favour home rule, even if it were economically feasible But they are eyeing the black gold soon to be rushing from the North Sea as their best hope yet of righting the regional inequalities they have suffered so long.