Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [384]
The reaction of Scottish Office ministers to these difficulties had cumulatively worsened the problem. Feeling isolated and vulnerable in the face of so much left-wing hostility, they regularly portrayed themselves as standing up for Scotland against me and the parsimony of Whitehall. Yielding to this temptation brought instant gratification but long-term grief. For in adopting this tactic they increased the underlying Scottish antipathy to the Conservative Party and indeed the Union. The pride of the Scottish Office — whose very structure added a layer of bureaucracy, standing in the way of the reforms which were paying such dividends in England — was that public expenditure per head in Scotland was far higher than in England. But they never seemed to grasp — as their opponents certainly did — that if public spending was a ‘good thing’ there should be lots more of it. That effectively conceded the fundamental argument to the socialists. But the truth was that more public spending in a dependency culture had not solved Scotland’s problems, but added to them.
There was only one answer. If a small state, low taxes, less intervention and more choice were right then we should argue for them and do so without apology. There must also be the same drive to implement this programme north as south of the border.
George Younger (who for all his decency and common sense was very much of the paternalist school of Scottish Tory politician) left the Scottish Office in 1986 to become Secretary of State for Defence. Malcolm Rifkind was the heir apparent. But I appointed him with mixed feelings. He had been a passionate supporter of Scottish devolution when we were in Opposition. He was one of the Party’s most brilliant and persuasive debaters. No one could doubt his intellect or his grasp of ideas. Unfortunately he was as sensitive and highly strung as he was eloquent. His judgement was erratic and his behaviour unpredictable. Nor did he implement the radical Thatcherite approach he publicly espoused; for espouse it he certainly did. After the 1987 election Malcolm made speeches up and down Scotland attacking dependency and extolling enterprise. But as political pressures mounted he changed his tune.
The real powerhouse for Thatcherism at the Scottish Office was Michael Forsyth, whom I appointed a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in 1987, with responsibility for Scottish Education and Health. It was Michael, Brian Griffiths and I who were convinced of the need to intervene to protect Paisley Grammar School — a popular school of high academic standards and traditional ethos — which (doubtless for these very reasons) the socialist Strathclyde Council wanted to close. I was moved by the appeals I received from the staff and parents. I also saw this as a test case. We must show that we were not prepared to see the Scottish left-wing establishment lord it over people it was our duty to protect. I sent a personal minute to Malcolm Rifkind on Friday 22 January 1988 registering the strength of my views. As a result of my intervention regulations were laid so that where a Scottish education authority proposed to close, change the site or vary the catchment area of any school where the number of pupils at the school was greater than 80 per cent of its capacity, the proposal should be referred to the Secretary of State for Scotland.
I also had to take a very firm line on the issue of whether Scottish schools should be allowed to opt out of local authority control, like their English counterparts. Before this could happen in Scotland, school boards in which