15/04/2013 Newsnight Scotland

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On Newsnight Scotland tonight, silence for Baroness Thatcher. For

the first time since Churchill 's funeral, Big Ben will fall silent as

a tribute to Britain's first woman Prime Minister. But the Scottish

Greens will not be silenced. Their debate on Mrs Thatcher's legacy will

go ahead on the day of her funeral. Good evening. Within the last half

an hour, the House of Commons has voted to halt Wednesday 's prime

ministers questions to allow MPs to attend the funeral. In the Scottish

Parliament it will be business as usual. The Greens say they are

pushing ahead with their debate examining Lady Thatcher's policies.

In a moment we'll be looking at different responses to her death,

but first, Andrew Black hears from one family about their feelings on

Baroness Thatcher's life and death. There were ugly scenes this

morning... For this family, memories of Margaret Thatcher's Britain go

back a long way. Husband Alan was an engineer at a

colliery in Stirlingshire, where miners became the first in the

country to go on strike in 1984. His family struggle was captured on

camera. The family summer holiday has been cancelled, and Alan and

Linda have not been together since the strike began.

After the pit close, Alan moved on, or so he thought. Since she's passed

away, the past few days, I have thought about it all and all of the

memories come back. There are some very ugly memories. She was a very

divisive woman. She was very hard, very single-minded, some people

could admire that, I could not. Of course, that view is not held by

everybody. In London today, and rehearsal of Baroness Thatcher 's

funeral procession from Westminster to Saint Pauls Cathedral. For the

first time since Sir Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965, the

chimes of Big Ben will fall silent. At the Scottish Parliament, one

group refusing to keep quiet is the Greens, who will use their one day

of holy Rood debating time to discuss Lady Thatcher's legacy. The

Conservatives say it is not appropriate. I am very disappointed

that the Green party have decided to have a debate while the funeral is

taking place. I think it is discourteous and

inappropriate, and I think they should withdraw it. Both the Tories

and the Liberal Democrats say the debate should be held on a different

day, but Green MSP Patrick Harvey is not for turning. This is not

intended to be a personal slight. would be perfectly happy if Margaret

Thatcher was alive and well in her �3000 per night sweet. But

Thatcherism is dead. Celebrations like these and downloading of

Dingdong, The Witch Is Dead have offended many people. In the age of

24-hour news, we have become used to seeing morning on a mass scale. Only

last month tens of thousands of people grieve the loss of

Venezuelans hugely controversial leader will stop and these

remarkable pictures from North Korea, when the so called great

leader Kim Jong Il died. So is there an appropriate way to act when a

national figure dies? Have the anti-Thatcher protesters broke and

some taboo is surrounding death and respect, or are harking back to a

tradition of protest? Last word to Alan, the former mine worker.

as the world was concerned, a lot of people had a lot of admiration for

Margaret Thatcher. I find it quite hard to come to terms with that

because I was at a different end of the spectrum. Did I celebrate when

she passed away? No. Well I have a drink or two when she is buried?

Possibly. That report from Andrew Black. I am

joined now by Brian Monteith, the former Conservative MSP, and writer

Stephen Reicher, Professor Of Psychology At St Andrews University,

and from Edinburgh we have the commentator Joyce Macmillan who

joined us on the programme last Monday. Good evening. First of all,

Brian Monteith, should the debate by the Scottish Greens be cancelled or

do they have a democratic right to speak freely? Of course, the Greens

have a democratic right to speak freely and it is for them to decide

what to debate during their own time and that is Wednesday. But I

understand that an offer has been made by the SNP to swap time with

them for Government time so that they could move it to a different

date. Nobody is saying they should not discuss the subject, just simply

that it seems rather insensitive to have it on that day. Frankly, I

think it is juvenile. This student politics. I cannot imagine that if

Robin Harper was still the leader of the greens this is the behaviour we

would have seen. To be honest, it does not sound like minds will be

changed by tomorrow morning. Do you think they will be changed at the

last-minute? Identity. I think only real influence would be if the

presiding officer really tried hard to say that it does not look

particularly clever and there is a way where we still have the debate

at a less sensitive time. If that is listened to then perhaps there would

be a change of heart. I just don't think it makes us look good. Joyce

Macmillan, the Liberal Democrats are also calling for a postponement. Is

it right that it goes ahead on the morning of her funeral when

conservatives may wish to watch it on television? I think they have a

perfect right to do it. I personally would not have chosen to do

something that is clearly a kind of response to Margaret Thatcher 's

ideas at the actual moment of her funeral because it makes it look as

if you are trying to show something of this respect, even if that is not

what is particularly intended. So I would not have chosen to do that. I

must say, that is about the limit of my willingness to join in this kind

of display of compulsory morning about Margaret Thatcher. I do not

think it is wise, but I do not think it is wrong. Stephen Reicher,

talking about this compulsory morning, we have been watching a

week of this and this ought to have this debate at this particular

time, we have been watching the reaction, what is your assessment of

the week and had people have reacted? Well, I think in many ways

what is going on not a reflection is that what is going on is not a

reflection of what we think of Margaret Thatcher but what we think

of ourselves. Do we want to be British, or Scottish, or do we want

to distance ourselves from it? The one fact that we all agree on is

that you cannot separate Thatcher from Thatcherism and those who talk

of paying their respects and those have been celebrating have been

celebrating the vision of Britain which he created. They say she has

saved Britain, but what that speaks to is a particular notion of what is

important, what is to be valued, who we are and who we should be. So it

seems to me that whether you are celebrating or whether you are

dancing on the grave, that your and Thatcherism are one and the same.

That is an interesting point. Brian, do you feel that

anti-Thatcher feeling is more aimed at the Government and the

establishment and the economy of the 1980s rather than Margaret Thatcher

herself? That it transcends Margaret Thatcher, the woman? You might be

able to think that weren't the case that so many people celebrating that

we see in George Square and Trafalgar Square were in their 50s

and had full should for her or experience. But so many of them were

clearly teenagers or in their 20s and were not even voting or even

born at the time. So this is actually a fight, at Battle, over

the ideology of what Thatcherism is and what it stands for. It is, in a

sense, trying to capture the history and find out what she did means. So

it's about either creating or destroying myths, so it will

continue for a good number of years yet, as Lady Thatcher's papers

become available every year Appenzell 2020, we will begin to

find out more of the detail. Some of the myths and got a round will be

exploded. It makes perfect sense. To that extent the youth makes the

point precisely. This is not about the past. It uses the past. The

protests are about mythmaking, but so is the funeral. So is silencing

Big Ben. You have two opposed forms of mythmaking. An argument about who

we are, what values we care about. Brian Monteith, you are shaking your

head. You can have a fight about Smith but nobody was dancing on the

grave of Harold Wilson, yet he closed more pets than Margaret

Thatcher. # more coal mines - - more coal mines. They do not know the

history. They do not know the facts. Joyce Macmillan, we are stealing in

this debate about the impact of Thatcherism. What does this mean to

you, given that there is a grieving family at the centre of all this?

There is a grieving family. I am struggling to understand why, as a

family, they are going along with this. This is an extraordinary

display of state mourning of a very partisan leader who describes

millions of her fellow countrymen as the enemy within. We now have a

society with much less job security. The very generation that

Brian Monteith says it should not be demonstrating are paying a big price

for this. They cannot even get a free university education any

longer. It seems to me that it is a very strange way for a family to

celebrate our personal loss bash to go along with this massive, and I

think very tasteless political show. If there was any person close to the

present government to have any respect for the unity of the UK as a

country, and for the feelings of those who did not support Margo

Thatcher, then we would not be seeing a funeral on this scale. We

would be seen at dignified funeral. I think it was Tony Blair's

government that introduced tuition fees. They adopted a lot of

Thatcherite ideology. The fact that they were a Labour government is

neither here nor there. The point about the funeral that has been made

is about the magnitude. It is going to happen in St Paul's Cathedral.

The cough and will be on a gun carriage treat in the union flag. Is

this right is to map who we admit to the national campaign says something

about who we are and what is important to us. The question of

whether we should admit Margaret Thatcher to the national campaign is

a political question. It is not a question of respect or manners. It

is a political question about how we see ourselves. The way in which

groups in nations behave is very much a function of how we see our

identities and our values. What are the priorities we want to pursue?

The question is whether the priorities that Margaret Thatcher

put forward are ones that he wants to see in the future. I could give

you my personal opinion, but that is not the point. The point is that

this is a political act with political consequences and therefore

it is quite right that it is debated. Just briefly on that point

- imported figures such as Nelson, and Churchill. We always struggle

over our identities. It is a matter of defining what we should

prioritise or not. There are certain figures that we would all admit to

the national campaign. Then we argue over their meaning. We argue over

what their true nature was. There are some individuals who we are

divided over whether we should invite them into the national

campaign. We know what Margaret Thatcher was. She was clear about

it. Do we want to admit that into the standard record or don't we?

That is why there is such an issue about this. A highly political

question. Margaret Thatcher was divisive in life. She is divisive in

death will stop is it right to have a funeral on this magnitude? She was

divisive to the extent that she was decisive. She took decisions that

other politicians had refused to take. That is why some of them were

so painful. She was the first woman Prime Minister. She was the longest

serving peacetime Prime Minister. There are a number of yardsticks

there that one could say makes it right. I am uncomfortable about the

cost of it. I think that is rather unfortunate. It would have been

proper to say there would be public subscription for it, because I for

one would have been happy to make a contribution. I am sure they would

have been many people thankful for what Margaret Thatcher did who would

want to make a contribution. But should it be of this magnitude? From

my point of view, yes, but many make disagree with me, and have the right

to demonstrate their feelings about that. Joyce Macmillan I am sure you

will not agree with that, but she was the first woman Prime Minister.

Tony Blair won three elections. The extent of my admiration for Margaret

Thatcher is that she succeeded in a profession that was male dominated.

But you would have to be a fantasist to see that she did match for their

cause of women's participation in politics. Margaret Thatcher was not

slightly interested in that. She did nothing to help the ordinarily women

of this country. Now the reductions that the government are making are

falling so disproportionately. Monteith, last words to you.

some people find it so uncomfortable is that Thatcherism lives. We see

this in the politics of the SNP and Labour it is received wisdom.

Margaret Thatcher achieved something that other politicians do not. She

changed things. She reverse Labour policies. To the extent that Labour

could not reverse them when they got in. We will have to leave it there.

Thank you for joining me. That gains debate is the same day as the

funeral, but after the funeral. A quick look at the headlines will

stop - -. Some strong winds over the next 24

Some strong winds over Heavy rain in the North of Scotland. Staying down

and damp. There will be a slice of sunshine for the afternoon. Still

some rain for North West Scotland. Through the central lowlands at the

rain should be patchy and light. Some gusty winds to the East of the

Pennines. Thicker cloud further South. Patchy light rain or drizzle

on the English Channel. Cornwall and Devon may see brightness at times.

Wheels fine and dry. For Tuesday there will be some sunshine. It is

to the North and the South of the country that we have more rain. On