Interest: The Stone of Destiny [View all]

[MichaelMcGuire]

Also known as the Stone of Scone..


Above Ian Hamilton (Ring leader) that liberated the Stone of Destiny in 1950.

It was, Ian Hamilton calmly acknowledges, the moment of no return. ''You sort of know that when you take a crowbar to a side door of Westminster Abbey and jemmy the lock that there isn't really any going back, don't you?'' he says philosophically. ''Not when you know that the next thing you are going to do is steal one of the ancient relics inside.''

Hamilton is lost in reverie for a moment. A wry smile crosses his face and then a thought strikes him. ''Not,'' he says urgently, ''that it was stealing. It was a liberation. A returning of a venerable relic to its rightful ownership.''

Hamilton stretches out his legs and turns his gaze to the slate gray waters of Loch Lomond. ''Of course back then I didn't realise the scale of the thing. That it would become an international incident,'' he says, with the air of a man who has been describing something no more outrageous than picking the lock of his own front door after forgetting the key.

Almost 60 years ago, on Christmas Day 1950, Hamilton, then a brash and idealistic young student studying law at Glasgow University, became notorious in England and achieved nigh-on hero status in his native Scotland when he and a trio of friends staged one of the most audacious heists imaginable. In a caper worthy of an Ealing comedy, they motored from Glasgow to London (in those days no mean feat), broke into the Abbey, and stole the symbol of Scottish pride, the Stone of Scone – with one of the ''thieves'' breaking two toes when it fell on them.

The borders were closed, a posse of police vans gave chase, and a national outcry ensued. Whereupon our intrepid quartet calmly held the Stone hostage, deftly tap-danced their way through police interviews and triumphantly ended the escapade by evading arrest. The Scots were ecstatic. The English, by contrast, were bewildered. Was it, they asked themselves, a student jape or an insult to the majesty of the British state?

By Olga Craig
For further reading visit below
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/scotnews08/081215_destiny.html
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A beautiful song which documents the return "Oran na Cloiche"
Best version in my view sung by Kathleen MacInnes