In an upper room of St Andrew's House an elite squadron of civil servants are doing what they do best: removing any lingering vestige of colour or drama from the white paper on independence. Only 30 days must pass before the SNP publishes the document it hopes will shift the momentum in the referendum campaign towards a Yes vote, but surely there is scope yet for another chapter to be added in the wake of the Grangemouth folly. This one needn't be very long and would simply be entitled "Renationalisation". The subhead would read something like this: "Why, in an independent Scotland, all sources of heat, light and power must remain always within the ownership of the people of Scotland".

At times last week the drama unfolding at the Grangemouth oil refinery resembled one of those walking history lessons where actors bring ancient characters and dramas to life and thus make what might have seemed a boring subject more vivid and interesting.

"Look, children, this is how they used to do industrial relations in the 18th century. First the mill-owners start to bully a troublemaker, whom they accuse of spreading ideas of sedition among the workers, and they plant evidence in his toolbox. Then the workers gather round to protect the worker and his family by threatening to withdraw their labour.

"Next the multibillionaire owner, Mr Rat, shuts the mill and tells the workers they must forfeit all the bonuses they have worked for and the money they have saved for their retirement or else he will take away their jobs. Then the local politicians and the workers abase themselves before him and tell him they didn't mean to offend him and that they will embrace all his demands joyfully and could he not just open the mill again. And then he declares disdainfully that he will think about it and there is a wicked gleam in his eye before raising his right thumb and collecting £130m of public money. And meanwhile all the other mill-owners throw their hats in the air and raise a toast to Mr Rat because he has shown them a great example of how to deal with truculent workers for ever more."

The only happy ending to this tale, even if Mr Ratcliffe did choose to grant Grangemouth a stay of execution, would be for an independent Scotland to take the plant into public ownership.

At present we don't really know how much Grangemouth loses each year because Ineos itself doesn't seem to know, having supplied several different figures. There are even claims by senior Ineos staff that Grangemouth is profitable. Indeed John Swinney, the Scottish government finance secretary, and Alistair Carmichael, Westminster's Scottish Office minister, both claimed that Grangemouth had "a bright future".

What is clear is that the refinement and distribution of a significant portion of Scotland's oil supply has been allowed to become the plaything of one individual. The threat to kill off Grangemouth and several thousand jobs may be lifted this time, it will not go away, and instead will remain until market forces deem it necessary to bring it into play again. The plant is in thrall to a particularly toxic strain of unfettered capitalism. This eschews the concept of gradual sustainability in partnership with a workforce whose labours maintain the plant and the community beyond.

The word "nationalisation" has been distorted into something ugly by the forces of the right in this country, which now include the British Labour party and its satellite Scottish project. It conjures up images of militant trade union bosses bringing down governments with endless strike action in pursuit of high wage increases.

The polar opposite of nationalisation – wholesale, free-market privatisation – has, lest we forget, been catastrophic for the majority of people in this country. Dennis Healey started the privatisation cycle in 1977, when the minority Labour government sold off a tranche of BP shares after the International Monetary Fund had bailed Britain out of its deficit problems. When Margaret Thatcher came to power two years later, Healey, her unwitting ally, had done the dirty work of softening up the British people; whereupon she embarked on an orgy of privatisation to balance budget deficits. This was also when she started covertly syphoning off North Sea oil revenues to pay down national debt. As such, she was able to claim credit for an economic miracle that only lasted about 20 years and made an anointed group of Conservatives very, very rich. Some miracle.

Key national assets such as steel and coal were also sacrificed in the face of an appalling absence of strategic leadership in the British Labour party and the British trade union movement. The rest of us were brainwashed into believing that King Coal was old and grey and full of sleep, and that British Steel was contaminated. Maintaining these national assets in public ownership would have allowed the country to take a longer-term view of their sustainability in the global marketplace. Instead of allowing them and the communities upon which they rested to be devoured by the greed of the Shopkeeper and her swivel-eyed acolytes, the nation could have benefited from the subsequently higher commodity prices.

Mrs Thatcher did indeed fix the economy – but only for the richest in Britain. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, dozens of communities and several thriving industries were economically cleansed to make that happen. Coal still helps power our modern world and the world is awash with ships, both peaceful and belligerent. Very little of this is British because the nation was sold a lie.

Alex Salmond has promised us that an independent Scotland will renationalise the Royal Mail, another profitable national asset sold for the benefit of greedy Tories. He must promise too that an independent Scotland will secure public ownership of all our sources of energy. The only winner has been Mr Ratcliffe. He's managed to get both Westminster and Holyrood to pay for his £130m yacht. I trust he'll give Messrs Salmond and Cameron a free week on it next summer. In the meantime, beware very rich men on oak-panelled yachts who tell you that the well has run dry and that Christmas has been cancelled. Dig deeper for the truth instead.