Posted on 09/14/2014 7:00:23 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
EDINBURGH—If Scottish nationalists win independence from Britain in this week’s referendum, they will owe at least some thanks to an unlikely ally: the late, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The current Scottish referendum on independence, coming down to a too-close-to-call finish on Thursday, has reignited the fire under Scotland’s long-standing resistance to Conservatism in Britain, especially the Thatcher brand of the 1970s and 1980s.
“I came over to independence as a result of Thatcher,” says Douglas Campbell, a 65-year-old Yes campaigner who showed up at a canvassing push near Scotland’s Parliament in Edinburgh on the last Sunday of the referendum campaign.
“I realized, as a young man, that things like this would happen again, where Scotland was quite clear in its wish not to have Tory policies, not to have the right-wing nature of Thatcherism.”
So when Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron came to Scotland last week to plead with Scottish voters to avoid seeing the referendum as a vote against the “f-ing Tories,” he wasn’t just talking about himself, but about a long line of Conservative predecessors.
Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond has bluntly described Thatcher as the “handmaiden” to the separatist sentiments that have been surging to new public-opinion heights in the current referendum.
In an interview he did with the BBC in 2013, in the wake of Thatcher’s death, Salmond said that the Iron Lady did much to “get the ball rolling” on the quest for Scottish independence.
“That overwhelming desire among the people of Scotland to escape the economic and social bedlam of the 1980s was actually the result of the approach of Margaret,” Salmond told the BBC.
“She set the ball rolling to make Scottish self-government a huge priority and that ball is still rolling fast now. So in that respect, people should reflect that in some ways, she was the handmaiden for a return to Scottish democracy. Not what she intended, but nonetheless what happened.”
It’s the underlying narrative in the Scottish referendum — the British right versus the Scottish left; a class struggle dressed up as a constitutional dispute.
Scotland’s National Museum in Edinburgh features an entire wing devoted to the history of the Scottish nation. Against the political backdrop of the independence debate, the museum’s Scottish wing serves as a powerful monument to Scots’ hopes of self-determination.
One exhibit, marking the late 1990s attainment of Scotland’s own Parliament, sits directly across from a large poster in which Thatcher is caricatured with a dark grin and oil, dripping like blood, from her bared teeth.
“No wonder she’s laughing. She’s got Scotland’s oil,” says the poster, a reference to Scottish nationalists’ insistence that Britain is getting too many benefits — and Scotland not enough — from the North Sea oil reserves.
As well, beside the Scottish Parliament exhibit, a series of film clips flicker in a continuous loop, showing the milestones in Scotland’s independence — its first nationalist MP, for instance. Here again, Thatcher and her unpopular policies surface in the sequence of clips as fuel to the cause of independence.
Scotland has a rich history of labour-union activism in politics, and one of Thatcher’s driving missions in the 1970s and 1980s was to rein in the power of unions.
Her tenure also coincided with the start of the collapse of the heavy industry on which Scotland’s economy was founded in the 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, Scotland was where Thatcher launched her massively unpopular “poll tax” reform, in which local taxation rates were fixed at a flat rate for each adult, and away from the system by which people paid taxes based on the value of their houses.
The combination of all these measures made Thatcher, and conservatism, toxic to large parts of the Scottish population to this day. The Scottish Conservative party was essentially wiped out in the 1990s and continues to struggle for any representation in the country.
The unpopularity of Conservatives in Scotland also goes some way to explaining why the No side has been accused of being too quiet. But both sides were ratcheting up their campaigns this weekend, with large rallies in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
At the Yes canvas in Edinburgh on Sunday, participants said they were feeling good about how far they’d come since even a year ago.
Marco Biagi, who was assigning canvas duties to a couple of dozen volunteers for the Yes team not far from the Scottish Parliament, said the mere fact that this campaign has turned out to be a close fight is motivating more people to get involved.
Two of the recruits, getting their bags of Yes leaflets to distribute, asked Biagi bluntly: “So how’s it going to turn out on Thursday?”
Biagi admitted he couldn’t tell: “I know it’s going to be close.”
Seems like I’ve heard that before....
Until the government has to pay the bills (without relying upon London or the Bank of England) that is..
then their socialism falls apart!
Oh yes, Thatcher, the worst PM they ever had.
Give me a fricken break!
I see the Left works it’s magic in Britain’s MSM also.
They do have the Royal Bank of Scotland.
This is really about the US-UK difference, not about Thatcher vs Reagan.
The key is the nature of class in the UK.
Thatcher was solidly middle class in origins and outlook. She was not in the loop with the traditional aristocracy and gentry, so she was seen as gauche by this lot. Many of these people are actually left wing.
On the other hand the old labor voting lower class considers itself defined as more of a tribe than an economic class.
So one does not easily move from class to class. It was much more like changing tribes than changing income levels.
Orwell had a very neat explanation of the whole thing in Wigan Pier.
In the US one can easily make money and be accepted by our upper class. And most people, even across a very broad range of incomes, consider themselves middle class. Reagan was born poor to a shop clerk, but never considered himself unable to mix socially with anyone. Richard Nixon was an even more extreme case, being born in extreme poverty. And George Bush, a patrician by any historical standard, understood and could speak as an equal with anyone.
They most definitely are more socialist and have been for generations.
But they will not be allowed to use the British Pound.
? “I realized, as a young man, that things like this would happen again, where Scotland was quite clear in its wish not to have Tory policies, not to have the right-wing nature of Thatcherism.”
Can’t take responsibility for your failures? Blame a conservative. In the media and want to shill for the left? Blame a conservative. Thanks Tailgunner Joe.
Since the 1960’s overall, some areas since the formation (by a Scot) of the Labour Party.
No thanks. We’re staying.
‘Thatcher is no way at the same league as Reagan.’
You got that right.
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