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 Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister (1979-1990) | Margaret Thatcher won control of the Conservative Party in 1975. She spent 4 years as leader of the oppositon before she went on to win the 1979 UK General Election. She was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 11 years years. During all her time in power, her party never won a majority of Scottish seats. She was only able to govern in Scotland because for 3 General elections she was helped into power by by the sheer voting strength from the Conservatives from the South of England outweighing the rest of the votes. In Scotland the Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats all seeked constitutional change - with 75% share of the votes between them it was a clear message that the Conservatives were rejected in Scotland. Thatcher ignored the demands for Scotland to have a devolved or independent parliament. |
| The people of Scotland had to endure the Thatcher Years. During her reign as Prime Minister she oversaw a number of damaging events that took place in Scotland. The Linwood car plant closed in 1981. Coal mining in Scotland was severly hit with the government running down pits that were considered to be uneconomic, yet continuing to import coal from overseas at the same time. In Lanarkshire the steelworks were closed down because there were other steelworks elsewhere in the UK that the government prefered to back. The shipyards on the River Clyde were on a downwards spiral due to the failure to invest to beat off foreign competition. Thousands of jobs were lost at the Singer Sewing Machine Factory in Clydebank. The government appeared not to care. It was often thought that Prime Minister Thatcher did not concern herself with Scotland as the Conservatives only held around seventeen parliamentary seats there. |  Thatcher's government was out of touch with the Scottish people |
| The repercussions of Thatcherite policies culminated in two key unwanted developments:
Scottish unemployment was proportionally worse than England's for a whole decade with 340,000
out of work in Scotland which was the worst for 50 years;
secondly, the gap between the rich and the poor was widened to its greatest level.
Next came one of the Conservatives most disasterous policies - the "Poll-tax".
This was officially known as Community Charge and was introduced to Scotland
in 1989. It was considered to be an unfair tax as all individuals
had to pay the same regardless of income. It was more of a tax on people rather than property so the poll-tax became difficult to collect as people could avoid payment. Worse still, the tax was imposed on Scotland by the voting power of English Members of Parliament a full year before the tax was imposed on England. Scotland was effectively being used as a testing ground for the policy, yet the government carried on with it despite Scottish protests - it was only disbanded after riots in London when English people rebelled against it. The whole exercise was flawed from the beginning and further added to the demise of Margaret Thatcher. Non-payment of the tax by protestors cost the government £1 billion by 1991 in England and Wales alone. |
 | It seemed that Mrs Thatcher was all too often dancing to a southern English tune. Her reign ended when she was challenged by Michael Heseltine for Leadership of the Conservatives. Then John Major emerged as the new Prime Minister following another round of the Leadership battle. In Scotland, she fostered animosity towards the Conservative Party which plagued Prime Minister Major's attempts to gain popularity in Scotland. |
