It's Scotland's oil

The idea behind the slogan has proven to be controversial in discussions surrounding the financial viability of an independent Scottish state and still resonates to this day.

Support for the Scottish National Party had meanwhile been increasing in Scotland since the victory of the SNP candidate Winnie Ewing at the 1967 Hamilton by-election.

In the early 1970s, there was a great deal of economic turbulence with the 1973 oil price shock, which was caused by the Yom Kippur War.

That resulted in rising inflation, high unemployment and a recession, a situation known as stagflation, in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

[5] Thus, the economic argument that formed the basis of the slogan was that while Scotland was part of the United Kingdom, it lacked control over royalties and the revenue from the majority of the oil, which lay in the Scottish sector of the North Sea.

[13] Nevertheless, a Scottish share of North Sea oil is never formally alluded to as part of Scotland's net fiscal position and is treated by HM Treasury as extra-regio resources.

[14] The BBC economist Evan Davis, however, reported prior to the 2007 Scottish Parliament election that the Barnett formula already allows Scotland to sustain higher levels of per capita public spending than the rest of the UK, which is approximately equivalent to its disproportionately high annual contribution of tax revenues to the central UK Treasury from oil production.