A YEAR past November, I called into a bookstore in Princes Street to
snaffle up some early Christmas presents.
Confronting me were two displays -- one of the newly-released Downing
Street Years, selling at #25, and one of the Kama Sutra reduced to clear
at #5.
Apart from pondering what sort of society we live in when you can get
five copies of the Kama Sutra for one Margaret Thatcher, it occurred to
me to ask the staff who was responsible for the juxtapositioning of the
displays.
They confirmed that the Kama Sutra was outselling the former Prime
Minister -- whose memoirs had sold but one copy. The Kama Sutra had sold
substantially more and not all to Members of Parliament. Then a young
lady explained the presentation.
''I just thought that if people were in the store reading the Thatcher
book and any of their friends or neighbours came in, they could quickly
move over and pretend they were looking at the Kama Sutra!''
I wasn't the guilty party who bought either book, but contented myself
with the newspaper serialisation of Lady Thatcher.
Within the text, I found one surprising piece of common sense and
wisdom about Scotland.
It was the section in which the former Prime Minister faced the
possibility of what her response would be to a vote for Scottish
independence. It is a clear, dignified and principled position.
''As a nation, they (the Scots) have an undoubted right to
self-determination; thus far they have exercised that right by joining
and remaining in the Union. Should they determine on independence, no
English party or politician would stand in their way, hower much we
might regret their departure.''
It was rather more clear and more dignified than anything she had said
while in office, and it started for me a 14-month paper chase as I tried
to get the present Prime Minister to endorse the wise words.
My first ''Dear John'' letter received a pretty frosty response. He
referred me to a much more equivocal statement that he had made in the
White Paper on the ''Taking Stock'' exercise.
By October of last year at Prime Minister's Question Time, he was
employing the near-nuclear deterrent of telling me to read through his
speeches from the 1992 campaign
Steeling myself to that task on November 9, 1994, I sent him some
relevant passages of his speeches which seemed to touch on the right of
the Scottish people to self-determination. For good measure, I asked how
he could apparently and rightly preach the principle of consent in the
Province of Northern Ireland while denying it to the nation of Scotland.
By December 12, his replies were becoming more and more detailed.
There was still, however, no straight-forward confirmation of the key
quotation.
Then at last the breakthrough. I wrote a further letter in response to
his New Year broadcast, picking up on the point that he himself had
challenged Tony Blair on how Labour would react to an SNP majority in
any future Scottish Assembly. Once again I asked him to endorse the key
Thatcher quotation.
Back came a terse almost petulant answer, but one which finally
accepted ''my position is essentially the same as the passage you quote
from Lady Thatcher's memoirs.'' He added that there would be no further
amplification.
No further correspondence is needed. As someone once said, I have
''game, set and match.'' For the faint hearts and doubters, there is
finally an acceptance from a sitting UK Prime Minister that all Scotland
needs to do to achieve independence is to vote for it.
This view is roughly that which is becoming clear from the first
opinion surveys south of the Border on the Scottish issue which show the
majority of English people substantially more supportive and enlightened
about Scottish ambitions than many Scottish, but Westminster-based,
politicians.
If offers Scots the political opportunity to face our own
responsibility to change our own circumstances without any alibi that
somehow the ''nasty'' English won't let us. The decision is ours and
ours alone. There is no big bad wolf hanging over Scotland.
Now I've finally got one unionist party leader on side on
self-determination there remains the other one. Which is why I'm lifting
up my pen again this morning and to begin a note ''Dear Tony.''
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