Don't wreck the heritage we all share

'She was the author of the most disastrous fiscal innovation in modern British history, one which cost billions to scrap. It's worth recalling a little of the history of the poll tax: it was the single issue that did most to foment constitutional discontent in Scotland. It was entirely her creation, and she carries it round her neck like an albatross.' Iain MacWhirter comments on Margaret Thatcher's call for a No No vote, in the Scotsman, 9 th September 1997.

The author of the poll tax occupies a unique place in Scottish demonology

By Iain MacWhirter in the Scotsman 10 th September 1997

Conservatives will insist gamely that her warnings about the threat to the Union will encourage many undecided Scots to "think twice" about home rule. But most "No" campaigners were privately dismayed by her manifestation, even before they heard she was going to break her silence. ("When we heard she was getting £50,000 to speak to American travel agents in Glasgow, someone said couldn't we get 50 grand together to buy her out.") The en- gagement was, of course, arranged long before the date of the referendum was known. Nevertheless, it seems extraordinary that the Conservatives should have allowed this ghost from the past to upstage their new leader, William Hague, as he arrives in Scotland today. Maybe Central Office decided that Scotland's a lost cause already, so why bother.

Yet, everyone knows she occupies a unique place in Scottish devolution- ary demonology. The author of the hated poll tax in the 1980s, she almost single-handedly revived the Scottish question from the suspended animation into which it had lapsed after the abortive 1979 refer- endum. Scots voters developed an almost visceral hatred of Mrs Thatcher; her personality and her politics. She seemed to embody all the ele- ments of London rule that Scots resented; she was imperious, remote, individualistic, triumphalist and quintessentially English. Her very diction grated. There was an element of thinly-veiled misogyny too, in the way she was referred to as "that Bloody Woman" on the door-steps in the 1987 election campaign. (It became known as the TBW factor).

She was an evangelist for the free market at a time when Scotland re- mained thirled to the collectivist veri- ties of state socialism and government intervention. Tax-cutting was inimical to a country which regarded high public spending almost as a moral good. The fact that Tony Blair has endorsed much of her economic reforms, and even models his style of leadership on her, hasn't helped rehabilitate her in Scotland.

If anything, Blair's homage to the Iron Lady made Scottish activists suspicious of the New Labour leader.

Her arguments today will be noted, and largely discarded. The Scottish voter has heard the warnings about high spending before - most recently during the election campaign; ditto the warnings about devolution deterring foreign investors (even the CBI is sceptical about that bogey). Similarly, the West Lothian question, which she dutifully rehearses, has been exhausted as an issue, and seems hardly to figure in the campaign. Her warning that devolution could threaten Britain's nuclear capability ("Agitators would have a field-day") seems like an echo of a bygone age.

The only passage that might make some Scots think twice - especially given the events of the last ten days - is her warning on the emotional ties that bind the Union. "Such ties of unity are inevitably fragile", she says. "They can, like those of any relation- ship unravel; and they may do so with unforseen consequences." No- one can deny that there is an element of risk in embarking on the most radical constitutional change this century. A Scottish parliament could be an end in itself, or it could be a means to independence.

However, most Scots who vote "Yes" on Thursday will not be voting to dissolve the Union. There is no reason why devolution should necessarily lead to separatism in Scotland, any more than it has in countries like Spain and Germany, where regionalism has strengthened the nation state, not weakened it. They might even agree with her that the UK is a "multi-national nation state" and that it is possible to be "Scotsmen without any diminution of our pride in being British." But that's hardly a conclusive argument against home rule.

It was, arguably, Baroness Thatcher herself who did most to unravel the emotional ties by her centralist rule in the 1980s. And she is hardly in a position to deliver "home truths" about the tartan tax. She was the author of the most disastrous fiscal innovation in modern British history, one which cost billions to scrap. It's worth recalling a little of the history of the poll tax: it was the single issue that did most to foment constitutional discontent in Scotland. It was entirely her creation, and she carries it round her neck like an albatross.

The legislation was pressed through the Commons on the strength of the votes of English Tory MPs, many of whom, like Michael Heseltine, abhorred the principle underlying it. It was then frog-marched through a sceptical House of Lords by unelected, Tory backwoodsmen who normally take no active part in the business of the Upper House, but were hauled in by the Government whips to ensure a majority.

With an extraordinary sense of time and place, she launched the 1987 election from the Scottish Tory conference in Perth on the day that poll tax - her "flagship" policy - reached the Statute Book. It was introduced in Scotland a year ahead England; an outrage to Scottish sentiment, and arguably in breach of the Treaty of Union, which was supposed to ensure that no taxes are imposed on Scotland not also levied in England. Many Scots refused to pay it on the grounds that it was unfair, undemocratic and unconstitutional.

But perhaps the most damaging aspect of the entire sorry story was the decision to abolish it only after street riots in England - the Battle of Trafalgar Square in 1990. This was an affront to Scots who had confined their opposition to peaceful constitutional demonstration of dissent.

Labour refused to endorse the non- payment campaign on the grounds that a party which aspired to government could not support law-breaking. Now law-breaking, violence even, was being rewarded.

That was when iron entered the Scottish soul. The Tories never recovered. The wipe-out on May 1997 was the ultimate price paid by the Scottish Tories for the poll tax. And if Scotland supports devolution on Thursday, it will be above all the tax - and Thatch- wot won it.

Much has been said about how the urgency has drained from home rule since Labour's victory in May. For the last decade, Scotland has been complaining about being governed by a party it had repeatedly rejected. Now, suddenly, Scotland finds it is governed by a party it has repeatedly supported at successive elections.

This is the paradox of devolution: the strength of demand for it is in inverse proportion to the likelihood of a Westminster government delivering it.

But today Lady Thatcher will remind Scots of exactly what they are voting for. She may not realise it, but it is her final unintended service to the cause of home rule.