BARONESS Thatcher's legacy of relentless individualism, exclusion of all collective solutions and market fundamentalism is still scarring Scotland to this day, MSPs have been told.
Green Party co-convenor Patrick Harvie used the debating time of his party and independents at Holyrood – moved back a day to avoid clashing with Baroness Thatcher's funeral on Wednesday – to make the claim.
He said reaction to the death was "predictably divided between hero-worship on one hand and demonisation on the other".
Mr Harvie said it was important to debate Lady Thatcher's legacy, adding: "She has herself been out of office for more than 20 years but the ideas that she embodied remain, regrettably, so dominant in our politics."
The Glasgow MSP highlighted the "relentless attention to individualism" under her government, resulting in the exclusion of every collective solution to problems. He also attacked her privatisation of public assets and "market fundamentalism".
Even "the record of the Thatcherite economic model fails," he said. "This was a government which enjoyed a windfall boost to the economy of some £70 billion from North Sea oil and a fire sale of public assets, from major industries to the housing stock.
"They didn't so much flog off the family silver as flog off the family home and then rent it back. And what did it achieve? Resources frittered away.
"All of this strikes me now, as it did then, as the character of a government which knew the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Mr Harvie's opening contribution was thoughtful and considered in comparison with later clashes, in particular between Labour speakers and an unusually bullish Conservative group.
Labour's James Kelly branded the UK's only woman prime minister a "class warrior" whose policies resulted in some people having died in an early grave and oversaw the destruction of manufacturing industry.
He said: "Back in the 1980s the Conservative party pursued policies which broke people's hearts and destroyed their dignity. As politicians, we must resolve that that must never be allowed to happen again."
Tory MSP Alex Johnstone said Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979 "as a result of an experience in the 1970s that had broken this country", and he told Mr Kelly: "The behaviour of the unions in particular in the United Kingdom had made the election of Margaret Thatcher an inevitability."
Fellow Conservative MSP Mary Scanlon also defended the former leader, saying former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson "closed over 100 more mines than Mrs Thatcher did during her reign".
Ms Scanlon asked: "If Mrs Thatcher's economic and trade union policies were so bad, why did the Labour Party not reverse any of them in 13 years in government?"
SNP MSP Christine Grahame was pleased the debate was moved from the day of the funeral so that what was said could be heard.
"The proposition we should all be house-owning, share-owning citizens has sown the seeds of property inflation and it bred a series of champagne Charlies who toasted their bonuses on the streets of London and rewarded self, not society," she said.
"The rich became richer and the poor poorer, creating poverty ghettos which remain to this day."
Independent MSP Margo MacDonald said Lady Thatcher brought about a social revolution which saw "some people become obscenely rich".
Ms MacDonald said: "My objection to Mrs Thatcher is she divided society between those who have and those who haven't and the Labour party has done very little to correct that."
l More than four million people tuned in to watch live coverage of Baroness Thatcher's funeral. BBC1's programme – anchored by David Dimbleby – drew an average of 3.2 million viewers across its three-hour duration from 9.15am, with 4.3 million watching at the peak, towards the end.
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