MARGARET Thatcher showed last night she had not lost any of her ability to polarise political opinion when she was urged to apologise for the destruction her policies had wrought on Scotland.
The call came from Labour a few hours before Baroness Thatcher was made a rare visit north of the border for a grand dinner to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her 1979 election victory that changed the United Kingdom for ever.
Even at the age of
82 and suffering from dementia, the Iron Lady's scheduled appearance last night at the Glasgow dinner organised by the East Renfrewshire and Conservative Association was enough to enrage Labour.
Margaret Curran, the Glasgow Baillieston MSP, called on Thatcher to say sorry for neglecting Glasgow's heavy industries and for introducing the hated poll tax that contributed so much to her downfall after 11 years.
Curran said: "Margaret Thatcher should apologise to Glasgow for her policies that wreaked havoc on our city. The constituency I represent is still trying to recover from the destruction that ensued from her plans and political approach.
"This is the woman that closed down our shipyards and steel mills, believed that unemployment is a price worth paying, and then told us that she knew best.
"If that wasn't bad enough, she used Scotland as a guinea pig for the poll tax. The Tories abandoned families and offered no support to people in desperate circumstances."
Thatcher arrived at the Thistle Hotel, Glasgow, last night for a dinner with more than 400 Tory grandees and activists.
"We just want to say thank-you to her, because I suppose this might be the last time that she visits Scotland," said one Tory MSP.
A Conservative Party spokesman said Curran should concentrate on the difficulties facing the country at the moment rather than criticising the politics of the past.
"The Labour Party needs to move with the times," the spokesman said. "They need to recognise the recession that they have landed the country in and realise that that is the issue that is on everybody's minds at the moment."
Thatcher was guest of honour at the dinner and was joined by two former Scottish Secretaries in Lord Forsyth and Lord Lang as well as Lord MacKay, the former Lord Chancellor, Allan Stewart, the former Scottish Office minister and MP for Eastwood, and Annabel Goldie, the leader of the Scottish party.
The main speaker was Forsyth, who gave a very different version of history than Curran's, praising Thatcher for rescuing Britain from the "horrors of Labour in the 1970s".
In his tribute to the UK's first female prime minister, Forsyth praised her for taking on the trades unions, for "unleashing a new age of enterprise and wealth creation", privatising businesses and selling council houses.
He also defended her decision to introduce the poll tax, claiming it had to be done to tackle the unfairness of domestic rates, although he acknowledge it was badly implemented.
