Letters / Thatcher? Blame the SNP!
Brian Nugent, the Thatcher government was chosen for you by the SNP (Government chosen for us; SN 18/4/13).
The Nats are desperately trying to gloss over the fact that their votes in the House of Commons helped put Margaret Thatcher on the road to power.
Scottish voters will have to put up with a great many fictitious claims during the run up to the independence referendum next autumn, but there can surely be none more outrageous than that peddled by the SNP on Wednesday.
They’re trying to gloss over the fact that it was them who put Margaret Thatcher into 10 Downing Street.
The truth is the Scots weren’t “given” Tory rule by anyone other than the SNP and if they suffered 18 years of Tory rule, it was because the SNP DID vote with the Tories and actually brought on their long years in power.
What Mr Nugent chooses to forget, or hope that no one will recall, is that it was the 11-strong SNP group in the Commons in 1979 that first tabled the no confidence motion in Jim Callaghan’s Labour government which led to its defeat in that memorable debate three weeks after the devolution referendum.
Margaret Thatcher couldn’t be sure of beating Callaghan until she saw that the Nats were on her side and once they had shown their hand, she then tabled her own no confidence motion, which, as leader of the main opposition party, took precedence over that of the SNP.
She won by only one vote, with all the Nat MPs voting with her – “turkeys voting for an early Christmas”, said not-so Sunny Jim.
Gordon Harmer
Brae
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