'SOME lady. Some legacy." Thus Jim Sillars, an SNP opponent of Margaret Thatcher 20 years ago, wound up his speech in a first-class debate on her legacy in Scotland.
Former foreign and Scottish secretary Malcolm Rifkind, and MSP David McLetchie debated the proposition that "Margaret Thatcher did more good than harm to Scotland" with former trade minister Brian Wilson and former MP Jim Sillars (the person with w
hom I share household expenses and some opinions).
The debate in the Signet Library was fully subscribed and a good time was had by all, recalling the seminal decisions and consequences of the policies and attitudes of the lady who was not for turning after she became the UK's first female prime minister 30 years ago.
The debate, chaired by STV's political editor Bernard Ponsonby, was the launch event for the book written by David Torrance entitled WE in Scotland: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate. Quite apart from the pros and cons of the debate, the size of the audience, the depth of its interest and knowledge of all things political gave the lie to the belief that people won't attend political meetings any longer.
Admittedly, the subject is fascinating, and all of us have our own particular take on Mrs Thatcher's effect on Scotland. Inevitably, someone as energetic and driven as Mrs T is likely to have admirers and detractors. The audience divided, narrowly, in her favour. Probably, with the passage of time, this is a reasonable reflection of where Baroness Thatcher stands now in Scottish public opinion . . . political light years away from where she was during, and after her tenancy of 10 Downing Street.
This shift in perception has come about as the changes she made in Scotland have bedded down since she left Downing Street. Socially, in some circles, it was suicidal to admit to being a fan of Maggie at the peak of her power, but politically she received the highest compliment from the opposition party in Scotland when Labour moved to the right and became New Labour. The architects of the refurbished party of equality, co-operation and redistribution threw out the old lefty Labour lexicon and embraced the market, individualism and competition – even in the NHS, comprehensive schooling and council housing.
We're now living with the Thatcher legacy in health services. The lady's philosophy produced the policy of internal competition in the hospital service. Does anyone now claim that contract cleaning and catering, the reconfiguration of ward management and bank or contract nursing services have produced a better quality of hospital service for the patient? Also, since one of her watchwords was "cost", and one of her obsessions anti-public ownership, she applied the measurements of commerce to the NHS and ended up with much more money having to be spent on trying to recapture the co-operative ethos necessary to a complex, caring service.
In education, Tories still applaud her, as did Malcolm Rifkind and David McLetchie in Monday's debate, for moving away from community schooling and giving parents the right to choose the schools for their children based on league tables drawn up on crude testing. The legacy left by this short-term, knee-jerk reaction has distorted curriculums and created much more administrative work for teachers.
The result of the Thatcher philosophy has been to lower the attainment standards in the three Rs. In this, as in her wrong-headed approach to the NHS, perhaps the most deadly part of her legacy was its success in persuading her true successor, Tony Blair, to travel further along the road mapped out by her, resulting in an education system that is steadily dropping down international merit tables.
The right to buy council houses distorted housing policy as well. Sure, it allowed many more people to own their homes, but it changed publicly owned housing for rent into becoming welfare housing, as councils were prevented from retaining or replacing their best stock. The effects of this half-baked policy, intended to set the people free from non-aspirational councils, are being seen today when, as I reminded Malcolm Rifkind during the debate, as the director of Shelter when he was Scottish housing minister, I warned that chickens hatched 30 years ago would come home to roost in 25 to 30 years' time.
However, one part of Mrs Thatcher's legacy was arguably very beneficial to Scotland. She appeared the very epitome of home counties Englishness and, to combat this, the Scottish parties found common cause in becoming more Scottish and arguing a spurious case that Thatcher had no mandate in Scotland.
Against that background, following Jim's by-election win for the SNP in Govan, the Constitutional Convention was wheeled out by Labour to stymie the SNP . . . and so Maggie's legacy includes the Scottish Parliament.
