1950 removal of the Stone of Scone

On 25 December 1950, four Scottish students from the University of Glasgow (Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart) removed the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in London and took it back to Scotland. The students were members of the Scottish Covenant Association, a group that supported home rule for Scotland. In 2008, the incident was made into a film called Stone of Destiny. It seems likely that the escapade was based on the fictional account of a plot by Scottish Nationalists to liberate the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey and to return it to Scotland, as told in Compton Mackenzie's novel The North Wind of Love Bk.1, published six years earlier in 1944.

The Stone of Scone, the ancient stone upon which Scottish monarchs had been crowned, was taken from Scone near Perth, Scotland, by troops of King Edward I of England (Longshanks) in 1296 during the Scottish Wars of Independence as a spoil of war, kept in Westminster Abbey in London and fitted into King Edward's Chair. English and then British monarchs were crowned sitting upon the chair and Stone. The Stone was viewed as a symbol of Scottish nationhood; by removing the Stone to London, Edward I was declaring himself 'King of the Scots'.

In 1950, Ian Hamilton, a student at the University of Glasgow, approached Gavin Vernon with a plan to steal the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in London and return it to Scotland. The heist was funded by a Glasgow businessman, Robert Gray, who was a councillor on the Glasgow Corporation. Vernon agreed to participate in the plan along with Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart. By removing the Stone the group hoped to promote their cause for Scottish devolution and to reawaken a sense of national identity amongst the Scottish people.