Why did Scotland hate that bloody woman?

Margaret Thatcher was a Marmite character, but nowhere moreso than in Scotland

EVERY TORY who believes that the Conservative Party remains a force throughout the UK should read this book. David Torrance skilfully scrutinises Mrs Thatcher’s record in Scotland and sheds new light on seminal issues like the ill-fated Poll Tax. Torrance’s central contention is that while Mrs Thatcher’s ‘New Realism’ impacted heavily on the Scottish economy in the short-term, it was the cultural asperity that Mrs Thatcher attracted that really did it for Scottish Tories.

Bernard Ingham, Mrs. Thatcher’s acerbic press secretary, put it most pungently: “I think it came down to a fundamental clash of values, they (the Scots) were paternalist while she was the Spartan nurse”. And, one could add, the infamous Spartan gruel made the Scottish nation choke. In Wales, too, these forces were active and that is why this book is such a welcome addition to the literature on Thatcherism. The author sets out to analyse a legacy “awash with mythology” and succeeds admirably.

Torrance is scrupulously fair to Mrs Thatcher and notes that both Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown have commended aspects of her economic record in Scotland. Gordon Brown, while still in opposition, noted that Mrs Thatcher’s economic skills were essentially analytical – she identified what was wrong. While Alex Salmond caused controversy more recently when he observed that Scots did not much resent her economic policies, but “we didn’t like the social side at all”. Salmond’s remarks sparked a furious row – further proof of Mrs Thatcher’s enduring influence on Scottish politics.

It all started so well. On her first visit to Scotland as leader of the opposition Mrs Thatcher was greeted by a rapturous crowd, and three women fainted. The rapture did not last long but the Conservatives performed fairly well in 1979 and 1983. Although Mrs Thatcher’s rhetoric was fiercely free enterprise, during her reign the public sector in Scotland did not shrink at all, regional aid was not cut back, and the iconic Ravenscraig steelworks was never closed despite pleas from British Steel. However, Mrs Thatcher did tackle some deep structural issues and steadily got to grips with inflation and the unions. The opposition parties failed to develop a convincing alternative during this period and eventually accepted most of the Thatcherite reforms.

Yet a key change occurred in the 1983-7 Parliament. As in Wales, the miners’ strike left many thinking that the Conservatives were at heart the English party. And Mrs Thatcher reciprocated by seeing Scotland as unresponsive and dependent upon a hand-out culture. What Mrs Thatcher said to Nick Edwards on a visit to Cardiff, and quoted by Torrance, captured her bemusement regarding the Celtic fringe generally. Shocked by an aggressive group of demonstrators, she turned to Nick Edwards and said: ‘Oh what dreadful people, we are really wasting our time? What is the point of all your efforts if they appreciate them so little?” As Torrance astutely observes, even when fulsomely praising the Scots Mrs Thatcher felt uncomfortable and had the look of someone far from her English home.

Increasingly after 1983 Mrs Thatcher demanded, but rarely received, a uniform approach to problems in Scotland. She thought that Conservative prescriptions should be applied across the UK, and that the Scottish Office should not stand in the way of essential reforms. Eventually she made Michael Forsyth chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party to act as a counter-weight to the unreliable Scottish Office and urged him to convince the Scots of the correctness of her approach. It did not end well and Scotland remained for Mrs Thatcher a land of problems not solutions.

Torrance’s account of the Poll Tax fiasco is essential reading. Here Mrs Thatcher was advised badly and the accusation that she tested the policy on Scotland is neither fair nor accurate. There was a considerable demand in Scotland for the abolition of the domestic rating system. Responding to popular pressure, the Scottish Office pushed the pace for reform and Mrs Thatcher responded. The most amazing fact in this excellent account of a policy imploding is that there was only a 15-minute discussion in Cabinet to finally ratify the Poll Tax. Although the episode did great damage to the Scottish Conservative Party, they were themselves responsible and not Mrs Thatcher. And as Torrance notes, the revolt against the Poll Tax in Scotland had none of the ferocity of future events in England.

On devolution, Mrs Thatcher was “a take-it-or-leave-it” unionist. Torrance contends that Mrs Thatcher’s British nationalism was a mirror image of the SNP’s Scottish nationalism. Under Thatcher unionism did not develop much in Britain despite some surprising initiatives in Ulster like the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement. Nevertheless, in Scotland there was no engagement with the devolution question, only the constant refrain (repeated in Wales) that Conservatives believed instead in true devolution to citizens, schools and hospitals. I agree with Torrance’s conclusion that Mrs Thatcher did not create the demand for devolution but she did firm it up.

Torrance’s erudite analysis provides us with many invaluable insights. None is more instructive than his assessment of Mrs Thatcher’s electoral performance in Scotland. In fact, the Iron Lady left Scotland rather unmoved and not up in arms against “that Bloody Woman”. The 1987 result in Scotland – the worst under Thatcher – was little different to the Conservative performance in October 1974 before Mrs Thatcher became leader. And, of course, the Conservative wipe-out in 1997 came long after Mrs Thatcher departed the political scene. In many ways, the decline of the Scottish Conservative Party owed more to other essential factors such as an increasingly competitive multi-party political process. Nevertheless, it is Mrs Thatcher who dominates the narrative in countless accounts of Conservative decline in Scotland.

Torrance’s seminal work ends with a sober conclusion which rings true of politics in Wales as well as Scotland. After Mrs Thatcher, her opponents had to accept the validity of the ‘New Realism’ in economic matters, while Conservatives had to accept the need for devolution in a union of such unique nations. While clearly sympathetic to the Conservative tradition, Torrance offers no cheap grace to Celtic Tories. More reason to read this excellent book.

- We in Scotland: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate by David Torrance is available from Amazon or all good bookshops