Defining our destiny
Coming as it did out of the political blue, and in a world still wreathed in post-war bleakness and austerity, the act was all the more audacious and was to have enormous resonance. It gave to the cause of Scottish nationalism not only a massive (if then short-lived) prominence, but also a romantic bravura.
It was treated at the time as little more than an undergraduate prank. Indeed, the authorities wisely decided not to charge the four for fear that a court case would have sparked a political row. As it was, King George VI sent a personal reprimand to the Dean of Westminster and the border between England and Scotland was closed for what was said to be the first time in 400 years.
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Hide AdBut "the repossession", as it came to be known, could well claim to have lit a fuse. At the time, it certainly awoke in many young Scots a sense of an injustice put right. As important, it encouraged a belief in action and change: throwing open to challenge and exposure that which had seemed permanent and immutable. The returning of the stone could thus fairly rank as a defining, inspirational event, both for Vernon’s generation and that which followed. Long before the stone formally returned to Scotland, the events of that night began the journey.