Scotland is better off because of Thatcher

MARGARET Thatcher: don’tcha hate her? "That woman", whose accession to power took place 25 years ago this week, is remembered as one of the most reviled and despised political figures in Scotland.

Her name and her legacy provoke such intense scorn that it is almost impossible in Scotland today to hear a voice raised in her defence.

So those of a nervous disposition - indeed, of any disposition - please brace yourselves for this:

Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest prime ministers for Scotland. Hate her voice and hate her clothes and hate her English ways. We are better off because of her, and a better country, too.

I say this because I believe it. But I say it also because I genuinely fear that the received wisdom in Scotland on the Thatcher era has now collapsed into the realm of the psychopathic. Such is our hatred of "that voice", "those clothes", "that bloody English bitch". Our hatred has quite unhinged us. Her period in office is spoken about in almost apocalyptic terms as something akin to the Black Death: a time of plagues and boils.

Thatcherism? Here was no ordinary premiership, but a reign of Tory terror: industries and livelihoods destroyed, hospitals closed and families thrown out of their homes. At this rate I soon expect to read of how every firstborn was taken out and slain in the blood-stained streets. Because for some in Scotland, Thatcher was not some close approximation of evil. She was evil.

Across key aspects of Scottish life, it has become important to maintain this grotesque portraiture. For in the psychopathology of Scottish attitudes to Thatcher, an important function is being served. Every age must have a convenient large waste-bin into which today’s failures and disappointments can be consigned without offence to the prevailing orthodoxy. This is the function of the Thatcher myth in Scotland today. Every present known shortcoming and fault, from ned culture to hospital waiting lists, from poor water quality to failing schools, from drug addiction to net migration, can be traced back without much fear of challenge or contradiction to the "Rampant Greed of the Thatcher Era" or "Thatcher’s Swingeing Cuts", whatever best suits the particular circumstances.

Count me out from all of this. And I suspect that many Scots also wish to be counted out from this collective demonology, though it is difficult to say so in public without being howled down as a Heartless Tory Fascist or Bloody English Bastard. This personal hatred disfigures us. And it disfigures history. It draws down an emotional red mist on a period when this country made real, positive and lasting gains. In fact, Scotland has cause to thank Margaret Thatcher for five great attributes and achievements.

The first was her courage. How lucky, how very lucky, Jim Callaghan was to lose the 1979 election. It was not just that the country was blighted by industrial action and the public sector was in near chaos. Sterling had been turned into a petro-currency that was squeezing the industrial sector to the core.

Whatever government won in 1979 would have had to take tough and painful action. And it was very painful in the early Eighties. Thatcher had the guts to see that action through where others would have surrendered or given up.

Second was her vision. And she had the vision to do the (then) unimaginable. An early example was the abolition of exchange controls. Short-sighted economists wrung their hands at the prospect of a huge capital exodus. In fact, from the early Eighties, Britain was to enjoy a cascade of inward investment, of which Scotland was a huge beneficiary.

The third was the halting of the relative economic decline of the UK and the overall improvement in our economic and living standards during the Eighties. It is often said that Scotland did not share in this uplift, or lagged behind the UK. But the figures do not show this. Between 1979 and 1990, GDP per capita in Scotland rose by 30 per cent, against 24 per cent for the rest of the UK. If we take the longer period, 1979 to 1996, per-capita GDP in Scotland rose by 43 per cent, compared with 33 per cent for the rest of the UK.

We well remember the pain of this period by way of manufacturing decline and the loss of manufacturing jobs. And there was a painful decline: manufacturing employment fell from 641,000 in 1981 to 420,000 by 1997. But at the same time there was a far greater rise in service-sector jobs.These rose from 1.23 million in 1981 to 1.5 million by 1997: a structural shift that had to happen.

Unemployment did hit shocking levels (close to 15 per cent on the claimant count measure) with the recession in the early Eighties. But by the mid-Nineties, this had fallen sharply. Meanwhile, home ownership, helped by council-house sales, boomed.

Throughout the Eighties and early Nineties, there was a surge in inward investment. By the early Nineties, Scotland was capturing a near 20 per cent share of direct inward investment to the UK and a 15 per cent plus share of non-manufacturing investment. The period also saw a real take-off for the financial services industry here. Jobs rose from 207,000 in the early Eighties to 255,000 by 1997.

At the same time, the Eighties and early and mid-Nineties brought a revival in enterprise and entrepreneurialism. Hated privatisation brought forth a number of outstanding utility companies, including Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern Energy. It also brought forth two bus companies, including Stagecoach, and the formation and expansion of many private companies.

Fourth was the combination of tax cuts and the maintenance of public spending. It became part of the Thatcher myth in Scotland that public spending fell during her period in office. In fact, it continued to rise in real terms. And in Scotland, the output of education, social security and health as a percentage of GDP rose, from less than 10 per cent in 1979 to 14 per cent by 1996. And Scotland continued to enjoy a much higher level of public spending per head (4,826 in 1997) against England (3,885).

Finally, there was her emphasis on personal responsibility and the importance of choice. In that bold declaration, "there is no such thing as society", she was attacking the way in which many invoked societal action as a cure-all for our ills. In truth, all action starts with individual responsibility and changes in individual behaviour. This, I would say, is even more relevant now than it was in the Eighties.

So why does Scotland hate Thatcher so? Where she stressed individual effort, we prefer collective action. Where she preferred small government, we cling to the nanny state. Where she celebrated success, we culturally doubt and distrust it.

I see little prospect of any change. Indeed, the trashing of her legacy is a vital task of the government class she so resolutely opposed. She held out against the relentless expansion of government and the public-sector administrative class. To these interests, Thatcherism was and remains the sworn enemy. Today, government is bigger than ever. And the size and remit of the regulatory state is growing as never before.

So it’s not the "Thatcher Legacy" over which I despair. It is the sense that grows with every day of a legacy unfulfilled, of a mission that fell short.

But we are still signally better off because of her. And perhaps it’s this that really irks my fellow Scots.