Now that the Treasury has released, under the Freedom of Information Act, the conflicting advice behind what is now described as Gordon Brown's 1997 "pensions bombshell", a thoroughly predictable row has erupted. Brown should say sorry to millions of pensioners, claim his opponents, for ruining their old age.

In a parallel row, the Confederation of British Industry, in the guise of current director-general Richard Lambert and previous DG Lord Adair Turner - he of the Pensions Commission - is trying to quash the suggestion (by the Chancellor's side-kick Ed Balls) that some senior voices in the employers' organisation were all for the changes at the time.

I remember the period very well. I was then, and still am, a trustee of an occupational pension scheme.

I was deeply concerned about the consequences of the abolition of a tax credit which, by the start of the new millennium, would be taking around £5bn a year out of the collective income streams of pension funds, charities and other bodies not liable to income tax.

I said so publicly. I recall writing critically about the Chancellor's decision at the time. But 10 years on, the memory can play tricks. So I've gone back and reread what I wrote then. And the picture which emerges is much more complex than the simple story grabbing the headlines today of a chancellor in a hurry who taxed by stealth and robbed those with private pensions of their futures.

First, the abolition of dividend tax credit was not an end in itself. It was the consequence of a larger decision to abolish advance corporation tax.

Pre-1997 ACT was paid by companies on the gross dividend paid out each year. At the time Brown struck, ACT was paid at the rate of 20%.

Up until 1993 it had been paid at a rate of 25%. But one of Brown's Tory predecessors, Norman Lamont, had already tinkered with the system and cut it by a fifth.

Brown was, in a sense, simply finishing the job.

But that job wasn't just about tinkering with tax rates. It was about the inevitable trade-off, in all publicly-listed companies, between paying out bigger dividends to shareholders year-on-year and retaining an acceptable level of profits so that some of what a business earned could be re-invested in its future growth.

The prevailing rationale at the time was that companies owed their ultimate responsibility to shareholders and should adopt a progressive dividend policy, paying out more in real terms each year as corporate earnings increased. That would be good for all shareholders, but especially good for the dominant holders of equities - pension funds - because they could claim back that 20% ACT contribution made on their behalf from the Exchequer.

But the new Chancellor believed passionately in a fundamental shake-up in investment attitudes in Britain. He wanted British companies to start matching the research and development spending of our main competitors. At the time we were investing between half and a quarter of what they were, in terms of percentage of total sales.

Historically, occupational pension schemes had been in surplus. Companies had even been taking extended pension contribution holidays. If there was a time to rebalance companies' responsibilities to shareholders and their commitment to future growth, this was it.

So, in his first Budget he abolished ACT and, as a consequence, removed the dividend tax credit too.

He also launched his £5bn windfall tax on the profits of the recenty privatised utilities. As a sweetener, he gave companies in general something back, by way of a 2p cut in corporation tax.

Some of us predicted big falls in stock markets if ACT went. Some of us even doubted whether the changes would trigger an investment boom. Just before that first Budget I wrote in The Herald: "Companies might find that rather than diverting spare cash into R&D they have to pump some of it into company pension schemes to repair the damage caused by the loss of the dividend tax credit".

But initially we were wrong. Despite the £10bn double whammy - the tax credit withdrawal and the windfall tax on the utilities - after that first Budget the stock market soared. On the first day, the Footsie climbed 80 points to a new record. It looked as if Gordon Brown would get away with it.

That he did not isn't just down to that so-called stealth tax on pension funds.

It's down to all sorts of other pressures which only became fully apparent later. The 1990s bull market, fuelled by the new technologies and a large dose of irrational exuberance, hit the ropes in 2000.

People were living longer. Lower prevailing inflation and lower investment returns were driving a coach and horses through past expectations of what any given pension pot would pay out. The abolition of the dividend tax credit was certainly damaging. But it was only one of many contributory factors for what has since turned into a very sorry story.