Stone of Destiny Read online

  Armed with the figures, maps and plans, and filled with the excitement of generalship, I approached another canny Scot to see what money I could wheedle out of him. I knew that he was not a rich man, but I had every indication that he would beggar himself if it would prosper Scotland. The sum I had in mind was £50, quite a lot of money by my standards, and I suspect by his also. He was a Gael whose family came from Mull, and as I sat waiting to be shown into his office I reflected how often in either the major or the minor episodes of history it was the Gael who had helped the Lowlander, more than the Lowlander the Gael. It has always been thus. The Highlands and Islands are in material things the poorest part of our country, yet I could not think of any part of our history where they had not played their part, and ever a generous and noble one. So it was again. Although we had met on many occasions, he did not know me well. I would be just another youth to him. Now I was going to give him details to show that Bill and I could do something that had long been considered impossible. Rejection would have hurt me, and laughter at the idea might have left a permanent scar. I was shown into his little office. This was the first hurdle.

  He was sitting behind his desk and he smiled and watched me as I came in. He was small of stature, with a high forehead and a narrow, deeply lined face. His hair was rather untidy, but there was about him an air of shrewdness, which I welcomed. I was in deadly earnest, and I felt that here was a man who would appreciate that, and not hum and scratch and talk about student pranks.

  I sat down and told him what was in my mind. I launched out into the details and grew enthusiastic as I went into the possible results of the plan. He watched me intently. He was impressed. He asked me a few questions and I answered them. Then he asked, ‘You appreciate the dangers and you know that you will probably go to jail?’ I told him that I appreciated the dangers.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I was once in your position.’ And he told me how in the early thirties there had been another plot to recover the Stone, and he had been in it. Unfortunately, one of his confederates had frustrated him by giving the details of the scheme to the press.

  He sat silent. I could see what was in his mind. He was full of enthusiasm, and desperately keen to help, but he felt that it was unfair to give us the money to run into danger while he sat safely in Glasgow.

  ‘If you don’t give us the money, I shall have to go to someone less reliable,’ I said regretfully.

  At that he laughed. ‘I’ll give you anything within reason,’ he said.

  ‘Can I have £10 now?’ I asked. ‘I’m leaving for London tonight.’

  I was delighted. We were at last on the way to doing something that would not easily be forgotten. Conversation and argument were behind us. The decision had been made and there could be no regrets and no qualms. The bitter taste of procrastination was no longer in our mouths, for we were going forward.

  A few hours later I caught the 10.30 p.m. train from Central Station. By a coincidence, Bill Craig was also going down to London that night as he was addressing a meeting in London University Union. Unfortunately, he was accompanied by another delegate from Glasgow University, so we could not travel together. We regretted this necessity, for we liked each other’s company, but I did not wish anyone to know that I was in London. While I had innumerable reasons for a trip south I did not class myself as an accomplished liar, and I thought that the invention of a sick relative in London was a story that I could not readily sustain. Although the other student was of our own views, I did not wish to arouse his suspicions.

  As I crossed the Border I was seized with shaking excitement. The Blue Bonnets were over the Border, and not for the first time. I thought of how my forefathers from Clydesdale had many times passed this way, in defence of the liberty of Scotland, or bent on hearty plunder. That had happened long ago, but the memory of old bitterness is not easily erased. And although I was travelling south with neither rape, nor arson, nor siege, nor pitched battle in my mind, but with only the recovery of a block of stone as my aim, I did not think, considering the times, that my forefathers would be ashamed of me.

  When I reached London this excitement was redoubled. It was a fine sensation to be at the heart of England once again, but this time not as a serviceman on leave or as a tourist, or as a visitor, but as a spy, arranging something which, while it was not hostile to this mass of people, could hardly command their enthusiasm and support.

  I was elated. At last I was doing instead of thinking. For years I had talked a little, and dreamed a little, and thought a little, and read a little, and now as a result of my dreaming and thinking, I was at last on the threshold of action without which no young man is complete.

  I went to a hotel near St Pancras Station and registered in my own name, as I saw no reason for subterfuge. The hotel was clean enough and reasonably comfortable for its price, but full of that big city commercialism that aims at giving not a halfpenny more than a pound’s service for 20 shillings.

  It was afternoon, and as soon as I had washed and freshened up, I took the subway over to Westminster. The Abbey lay in a pale East Coast sunlight, rich and dignified and stately, like an Englishman’s conception of his country’s history. But when I saw the Houses of Parliament which lay behind it, I realised that it was a jewel set on a mud-bank.

  I crossed Parliament Square and entered the dim sanctuary of the nave from the west door. It was quiet and peaceful. A handful of visitors lingered along the gloomy length of the building or moved respectfully round the grave of the Unknown Warrior. I joined the procession of sightseers, and for some considerable time moved about in the calm duskiness. It was, of course, not my first visit to the Abbey, and I had studied so many maps and plans that I already had a considerable knowledge of it. But I wanted to have a vivid picture of the whole building in my mind. In particular I wanted to learn all I could about locks and doors.

  At length I came to the entrance to the eastern chapels, and was forced to pay my shilling entrance fee like a visitor to a common museum. Religion in England seems to be a lucrative trade, but I was more offended at the idea of a Scot being charged by an English cleric for permission to view the Stone of Destiny.

  The Stone was contained in a box-like aperture under the seat of the Coronation Chair, which stood in Edward the Confessor’s Chapel with its back to the rood-screen, which in turn acted as a backdrop to the high altar. I examined the Stone carefully. It is a block of rough-hewn sandstone 26¾ inches long, by 10¾ inches deep, by 16¾ inches broad. These measurements came from a book. I did not measure it. I had not been able to find its weight, but we had reckoned that it would not be more than 3 hundred-weight, though we were later to discover to our cost that it was more than four. On either end a few links of chain terminating in an iron ring would provide handles that would be useful for carrying it.

  The Chair itself provided no great difficulty. It is, I think, of oak and very ancient. It is indeed the oldest piece of furniture still used for the purpose for which it was made, to hold the Stone. A small lath along the front held the Stone in place, and I saw that this could easily be removed. I was anxious that we should be able to do this without damage, for I had a veneration for ancient workmanship. But if it needed to be jemmied away, jemmied it would be. The stolen Stone was behind it.

  Having gorged myself on these details, I looked further afield. The corkscrew wooden stairs that led into the chapel would give considerable difficulty to two people dragging a heavy weight, and the iron grill through which I had passed when I paid my shilling might be locked at night. We might, however, be able to circumvent those difficulties by using the door that led through the rood-screen and past the high altar. I disliked thus invading what to some people was a holy place, but for my own part I had no dread of altars.

  Before I left I engaged one of the guides in conversation. I was interested in the Abbey, very interested, but how did they keep it so clean? Surely an army of cleaners came on every night when the Abbey was closed. No? I made
a mental note that we would not be likely to blunder into an army of cleaners. A few other leading questions and another prowl round showed me all there was to be seen. I was then able to leave the Abbey, taking with me all the information I required for successful burglary.

  I collated this information in an adjacent pub. I had bought a guidebook which contained an excellent plan of the Abbey, and I spent my time filling in details that I had observed and wished to remember. It amused me to think that the Dean and Chapter were providing the drawing on which the plan of campaign was to be worked out. Thereafter, for the space of three hours, I wandered round the back streets between Victoria and Millbank, for I wanted a complete picture of all the approaches to the building. In the early evening I went back to my hotel and lay on the bed and smoked a cigarette. I had had little sleep the night before, and I had walked many hours that day on hard streets. In return I had a complete picture of the whole district. There was only one thing more I wanted to know, and that was what police activity there was in the vicinity of the Abbey in the hours of darkness.

  I put out the light and slept. At eleven o’clock I rose and took a tube to Westminster. My intention was to keep circling the Abbey all night, making careful notes of all I saw. By one o’clock the streets were deserted, and only an occasional vehicle sped along the rear of the Abbey. I was particularly interested in Old Palace Yard. I continued my watching, making notes every quarter of an hour. As time passed, I became more and more satisfied, for only once did I see a policeman, and he was some distance from the building. The nearest one on permanent duty was 300 yards away at the gateway to Palace Yard. At five o’clock I walked to Whitehall, hailed a taxi and returned to my hotel, well satisfied with my night’s reconnaissance.

  My reconnaissance took place before the days of terrorism, when there was still casualness rather than fear in the management of affairs of state. I did not know then that what guarded Westminster was not guns, or security cameras, or patrolling policemen, but the mystique of the British Empire. So confident was the Empire in 1950 that it was beyond belief that anyone would sacrilegiously penetrate its mysteries, and certainly not us Scots, who were a subject race; the decent Jocks who can always to be trusted. It was that very mindset that we sought to change, and we could not have found a better way of changing it. Had there been any real security we would have been frustrated right at the start. I had never any thought of using violence. Although I had been taught to handle arms in the forces there was no thought of going armed. Mahatma Gandhi was dead only two years, and he was then, and still is, one of my great heroes.

  Another of my heroes, although not in the international class of Mahatma Gandhi, was the man who financed us. There was a time when I was pretty coy about his identity in this chapter. He was of course John MacCormick, the founding father of the modern Home Rule movement. Despite the difference in our years we became the closest of friends. At that time, as the leader of the moderates, he could not be seen to be in any way associated with illegal acts. He was a great man, and I am glad that nowhere is there a statue to him, nor so far as I know even a portrait. Ikons for John are unnecessary. He is remembered in many hearts, not least my own, as a great, affectionate, humorous human being, who taught me the fine lesson that high causes can be pursued without bitterness, and without too much solemnity either.

  It was for such a cause that I had been spying in London. Five hours later I was on the train to Glasgow. I was tired but full of burning contentment. I now knew beyond all shadow of doubt that what we planned was not beyond our capacity. Difficulty there was but that was a challenge. From now on we were to face not indecision, which is the most sick-making of all maladies, but only the cold recklessness of calculated risk-taking, which is a joy to every young man.

  Chapter Five

  Four months after our raid on Westminster I was addressing a meeting in Aberdeen in support of Home Rule. Our chairman was Professor Jones of Aberdeen University, who during the war had been one of the back-room boys of the War Ministry, and had been responsible for considerable advances in the technology of scientific warfare. His book, Most Secret War, is the classic work on the subject. I was interested to meet him, not only for himself and his erudition, but because he fascinated me as an academic who had parachuted into enemy held territory with the Commandos on raids on enemy scientific establishments. His job was to tell the soldiers which pieces of enemy equipment should be taken back home so that we could find out what the enemy was up to.

  He still kept up with the Commando officers who had led these raids on the enemy. He assured me that they had a professional interest in our raid on the Abbey, quite apart from its political motive and its public repercussions. Theirs was the interest of the professional soldier in a coup which they felt fell within the province of their own profession. I had always been fascinated by the guerilla nature of their operations, so like the traditional means of waging Scotland’s wars, and I was flattered to find that they found some interest in our own.

  Certainly in the days of preparation for the raid we tried to emulate what we believed to be their methods. There were a great many factors to be considered and allowed for, but while we had to admit that there was a great margin for chance, the more we planned and considered, the more many of these factors came under our control. Unlike the Commandos, however, our action was limited by political and humanitarian considerations. We had to succeed or come near to success, for if we failed miserably we would plunge ourselves, our movement and our country into nationwide derision, and, as England was to learn to its cost, hearty laughter is a sharp weapon.

  If it was planned as something of a military operation such planning had its limits. The means at our disposal were slender. There was no one behind us for support. Unlike ordinary soldiers we were not expendable. The two of us were all there were. We had very little money, we had utterly put aside any question of using violence, for we desired a peaceful demonstration, and we were to work all the time in secret at the very centre of the enemy camp. But the greatest force working against us was one which no Commando ever knew. We were planning consciously to break laws that we had been trained from birth to revere and respect. For my part it was only the calm belief that a person’s conscience is the ultimate law that kept me going.

  Now that I had a clear idea of the geography of the place, our first and most obvious task was to find out exactly how much the Stone weighed. This was not as simple as might be imagined. All the books I had read on the subject had dealt with the Stone in fact and legend; one had even dealt with it as though it were a geological specimen. None, however, had given its weight and dimensions. Although we knew its approximate size, we did not wish to calculate its weight from the specific gravity of sandstone, lest an arithmetical blunder should throw us several hundred-weight out. In this connection John MacCormick was able to help us. The next time I visited him I explained our trouble and he reached for his telephone.

  ‘Bertie Gray’s the man,’ he said. ‘He knows more about stone than anyone else in Scotland.’

  He made an appointment for me, and I went along to visit Councillor Gray, who pursued the rather lugubrious trade of monumental sculptor. We met in his little office beside the Beresford Hotel in Sauchiehall Street, and I told him what was exciting me.

  He was not surprised, for he had already had some inkling from our friend of what was afoot. I was delighted with his almost boyish desire to implicate himself art and part with us. Since he was Vice-Chairman of the Covenant Association, Rector’s Assessor on Glasgow University Court, and a member of Glasgow Town Council, I should have stood in awe of him. Respect I undoubtedly had, but it was respect for the qualities that had sucked him into high office rather than for the high office itself. Awe I had none. Although he was as old as my father, he had a capacity for being as young as the company he kept. I numbered him among my friends. Much later in the story of the Stone he was to win my respect for the coolness with which he took risks. When the hun
t was at its height, he it was who dodged the police, arranged for the repair of the Stone and acted as its chauffeur on many of its journeys about Scotland.

  The councillor did more than calculate the weight of the Stone for me. He got on the telephone to his mason’s yard at Lambhill and gave some instructions. The next day he drove me out to Lambhill. In 1950 few students had cars and I was not among their number. We went under the pretence that I was the prospective purchaser of the latest in tombstones. I casually admired some tombstones and slowly worked towards the corner of the yard that he indicated. There, among the long grass, lay a replica of the Stone of Destiny. It was 20 years old. It had been made in the late twenties in connection with another plot to recapture the Stone, a plot that had never come off. Lying on the ground it looked much bigger than I had imagined.

  ‘It weighs four hundredweight,’ he told me. An apprentice bearing a hammer approached, and I resumed my meditations among the tombstones and reflected that its weight was likely to be the cause of some strained muscles.

  Following on my excursion to Lambhill, Bill, the councillor, John MacCormick and myself met several times per week. During his visit to London, Bill had found time for a visit to Westminster, and his impressions tallied with mine. On the other hand, it was years since the other two had been there. They were able to act like a House of Lords with an impetuous Lower Chamber, and give us the benefit of minds that were not squinting from too much contemplation of the subject. As we talked, several salient points emerged.