Over the last few days, as most of Scotland’s media has focused on hysterical smear stories and outright lies, we’ve been digging around trying to uncover the truth about events around and leading to the closure of the Forth Road Bridge.

Here’s what we’ve got so far.

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1. The reason there isn’t already a second road bridge at Queensferry is the Labour Party. When they came to power at Westminster in 1997 one of their first acts was to cancel the building of a new bridge planned by the previous Conservative government, claiming that building it would cause traffic congestion in Edinburgh.

2. When the Scottish Parliament was restored in 1999 and Labour ran it for eight years, they continued to stall and delay and oppose the building of a second bridge, despite the increasingly urgent warnings of the Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA) that one was needed as soon as possible due to traffic load on the old bridge.

3. Prominent Labour figures, meanwhile, were still insisting that there was no need for a new bridge as the old one could survive indefinitely, and concentrating all their attention to building the Edinburgh trams instead, reacting with fury to any suggestion that the bridge was a greater priority.

4. When the SNP came to power at Holyrood in 2007, within months they’d analysed a study and announced that a new bridge would be built.

5. Labour, still in power at Westminster, continued to obstruct and delay the bridge as much as possible, refusing the Scottish Government permission to use advance capital funding to get the crossing built quickly and suggesting that they instead save up for several years, or use cripplingly expensive PFI to finance it.

(Even though PFI was the reason they’d given for cancelling the Tory one in 1997.)

6. Meanwhile, the old bridge was still suffering under the strain of far more and much heavier traffic than it was designed for in 1964. However, strengthening work over the years had enabled it to adapt to the higher load as a temporary coping measure while the new bridge was built to relieve it.

7. This was part of a conscious general strategy to minimise disruption to bridge users until the new crossing was operational, at which point major repairs to the old bridge could be undertaken. In 2012 Forth bridgemaster Barry Colford told an International Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety conference at Lake Como in Italy:

8. In 2012 the Scottish Government decided that in the light of budget pressures it would dissolve FETA within three years and hand responsibility for the bridge over to Transport Scotland. It advanced the Authority money from future budgets so that it could fund maintenance work from its reserves until its dissolution.

9. In 2009 FETA had decided to defer some repair and strengthening work which had been planned for 2010, in order to manage its budget effectively and also prioritise the most important safety issues, which at the time still mainly concerned corrosion of the bridge’s main suspension cables.

Replacement of one complete section of the bridge was avoided because it would have entailed closure of the bridge and major disruption, which FETA hoped could be avoided until the new crossing was operational.

These factors – NOT any budget shortfall – were the reason behind the decision, according to FETA convenor and Liberal Democrat councillor Tony Martin:

10. In 2015 Barry Colford imposed a 150-tonne weight restriction for abnormal loads as a preventative measure to reduce unnecessary strain until the section was repaired or replaced. Such a restriction would have almost no effect on bridge users, loads of such a size being extremely rare.

11. Part of the section which was originally scheduled to be replaced as part of those repairs developed a crack in December 2015, leading to the bridge being closed as a precaution to avoid greater damage. The defective part had not previously been thought to be at risk and the problem had not been foreseen.

An inspection in June 2015 had given the area a clean bill of health, according to Transport Scotland press officer Danny Chalmers.

There’d been no reason to predict or expect the failure. Sometimes things happen.

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In summary, then, what we know is this: that for almost 20 years Labour have first cancelled, then obstructed and delayed, a second bridge that would otherwise have been operating now. Had that bridge been in place major repairs could have been done to the old bridge, rather than having to be delayed in the hope of minimising disruption.

Had FETA felt that these major repairs were urgently required, it had the money in its reserves to carry them out. It chose instead, quite reasonably, to try to stall and buy some time until the new bridge was due to open next year, thereby avoiding the total closure that the repairs would have entailed.

The sudden unforeseen failure of a part which had been regularly inspected and not found to be under any dangerous stress then forced a precautionary closure of the bridge. There was at no point any risk of the bridge collapsing. Had the defective part failed entirely, it would have caused damage that would have taken far longer to repair, but the bridge would not have fallen into the Forth.

FETA took a calculated risk which was in effect a “no-lose” gamble. They hoped a bridge closure could be avoided, but as their only other option was to replace a whole section – which would DEFINITELY close the bridge, and for longer – current events leave bridge users no worse off than they would have been had the work been done.

And that’s the story. On taking power the SNP commissioned a second bridge as fast as possible, and FETA (a body dominated by councillors from Unionist parties) acted sensibly and responsibly in trying to keep traffic running by patching up the old bridge until the new one could relieve the burden and enable major work to be done.

The only people who can definitively be identified as being at fault are the Labour Party, without whom there would already be two road bridges across the Forth at Queensferry. Readers may feel that it’s little wonder that they’re making so much noise now, in a frantic attempt to distract attention from their own culpability.