Their audacious actions led to the border between Scotland and England being closed for the first time in centuries and reportedly left King George VI “deeply distressed”.
The students who stole the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day in 1950 became Britain’s most wanted criminals overnight — and were lauded as heroes by supporters of Scottish self-rule.
However, government files, which have been kept under wraps for almost 75 years, suggest that Ian Hamilton, Kay Matheson, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart were identified after being betrayed by moles placed within the nationalist movement by the British state.
Roadblocks placed across the Cheviots failed to catch the culprits who had repatriated the stone on which Scottish monarchs had been crowned for centuries and which was recently used in the coronation of the King.
Newly declassified documents reveal that struggling Special Branch detectives used Scottish-based informants to figure out who was responsible for the heist, which was denounced by the Dean of Westminster as “an act of sacrilege”.
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Metropolitan Police correspondence from March 1951 shows that after three months of fruitless investigations, they received a tip that Matheson, a 22-year-old Glasgow-based student domestic science teacher, was involved.
Their files state: “On the 24th January, 1951, she was seen at her lodgings in Cleveden Drive, Glasgow, by Detective Inspector Kerr, Special Branch.
“She made a complete denial of having anything at all to do with the theft of the stone and said that on Christmas Day she was at home at Firemore, Inverasdale, Ross-shire.”
Her strong denial and seemingly solid alibi left the investigators, once again, at a dead end.
However, the London-based force finally made a breakthrough after detectives made “certain inquiries” and were put in contact with “certain informants” based north of the border.
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The information that these insiders were able to provide brought the police to the “irresistible conclusion that [Matheson] had been one of the party concerned in the theft of the stone”.
The document adds: “Information has also now been obtained as to her possible companions.”
Shortly afterwards, officers went directly to the homes of Vernon, Stuart and Hamilton, who were all students at the University of Glasgow and members of the Scottish Covenant Association, which demanded the re-establishment of a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.
Police records show that Hamilton, who went on to become a successful barrister and author, was entirely unperturbed by the prospect of being interrogated. One senior officer wrote: “Hamilton denied all knowledge of being concerned in the theft of the coronation stone and flatly refused to make any statement at all.
“Although he made no complaint to me about being interviewed — in fact he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to explain to me whom he considered the lawful custodian of the stone should be — he strongly resented me having interviewed his friend Miss Matheson.
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“All the other persons whom I had cause to see in connection with this inquiry in Scotland were either extremely helpful or politely uncooperative.”
However, the files show that the presence of English detectives on Scottish soil provoked ire among senior members of the judiciary.
Documents which have been opened and placed in the National Archives at Kew show that John Wheatley, the lord advocate, the country’s most senior law officer, raised concerns with Scotland Yard in the spring of 1951.
“The lord justice general [the most senior judge in Scotland] has written to me regarding the recent inquiries by Scotland Yard detectives in Scotland in relation to the theft of the Stone of Destiny,” he wrote,
“He represented that there was strong feeling that English detectives should come up here to pursue their inquiries and that the method adopted in conducting the actual inquiries was giving rise to a great deal of public dissatisfaction and criticism.
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“The lord justice general [Lord Cooper, a former unionist MP] expressed the grave concern of the judges and of other people connected with the law regarding the manner in which these interviews have taken place.
“We must be able to resist any suggestions that undesirable methods are being resorted to.
“If it should transpire that the procedure followed in this case justified critical comment, then steps ought to be taken to ensure that the procedure is rectified in future.”
The students used a crowbar to enter the abbey in darkness and managed to retrieve the rock — plundered by Edward I, the so-called Hammer of the Scots, in the 13th century — only for it to crash to the floor and break in two.
After hastily loading the chunks into two cars, the culprits separated and loitered in England, to avoid the roadblocks, before eventually making their way north of the border, where a stonemason repaired the relic.
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In April 1951 the gang of four left the stone, wrapped in a saltire, at Arbroath Abbey, where the declaration of Scottish nationhood was made in 1320.
In London, Sir Hartley Shawcross, the attorney-general who had prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, persuaded Clement Attlee, the Labour prime minister, that taking the culprits to court would backfire.
“I am satisfied that a prosecution would do no good except to the defendants, to whom it would give the opportunity of being regarded as martyrs if they were convicted, or heroes if they were acquitted,” he wrote on April 18, 1951.
More than 400 miles north, Wheatley came to a similar conclusion, stating: “The prevailing view in Scotland is that those who removed the stone were foolish rather than criminal . . . and that it would do no good, and might do considerable harm, to proceed against them.”
After being assured that no action would be taken against them, all four admitted their involvement.
Hamilton, the last survivor, was hailed as a “giant” by Nicola Sturgeon when he died last October, aged 97. “I have received occasional words of wisdom, encouragement and support from him which I will always treasure,” Sturgeon, who was then first minister, said.
Hamilton’s book The Taking of the Stone of Destiny was made into the film Stone of Destiny in 2008, starring Robert Carlyle and Billy Boyd.
Before his death in 2010 William Wolfe, who led the SNP between 1969 and 1979, revealed he became convinced that the party had long been infiltrated by members of the British security services.
“I remember one individual in particular who claimed he had spent many years in America before joining the party,” he said.
“Something about him just didn’t add up and we all suspected he was some sort of government informer.
“A lot of us used to joke about having moles in our midst.”
Wolfe, a longstanding anti-nuclear campaigner, became convinced his phone was tapped in the 1970s after he received an offer — which he spurned — from Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, to bankroll the Scottish independence cause.
“It is quite, quite wrong for a legitimate and democratic party to be under surveillance in this way,” he said.
The stone, which was originally kept at Scone Abbey in Perthshire, was finally sent back to Scotland in 1996 and has been kept at Edinburgh Castle.
However, it will form the centrepiece of Perth Museum when it opens next year after a £27 million redevelopment.
