MARGARET Thatcher infuriated Scottish viewers during a landmark BBC Scotland encounter by claiming she was on their side, according to interviewer Kirsty Wark.

The broadcaster recalls the sit-down with the then Prime Minister in the second part of The Years That Changed Modern Scotland.

Mrs Thatcher’s visit in March 1990 followed the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland and a decade of deindustrialisation and soaring unemployment.

With protests surrounding her trip north, the stage was set for a memorable clash between Britain’s first woman Prime Minister and the Scots journalist who would eventually become an anchor on BBC Newsnight.

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“The Conservative Government realised they had a problem in Scotland,” says Wark in the documentary. “The idea was that Margaret Thatcher was going to come up and woo the Scots. She had never really done an interview before ...that was solely about Scotland. She felt very uncomfortable doing it. She also didn’t want to be interviewed by me. Downing Street requested a man but the BBC stood firm.”

Wark asked the Prime Minister why she was so unpopular in Scotland.

Mrs Thatcher disagreed, telling Wark that whenever she was here people would tell her to come back soon.

During the interview, Mrs Thatcher used a phrase that struck Wark as odd. The Prime Minister said she was perturbed that at the last election “we in Scotland” had not had the full benefits of job creation enjoyed elsewhere.

“I remember thinking she’s not going to say that again, is she?” says Wark. “It seemed such a weird phrase. And yet she did.”

The “we in Scotland” phrase grated on so many Scots because it implied the whole of the UK was in this together, says Wark.

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“But actually Scotland was suffering quite a lot of economic pain, and if anything her tone in the interview exacerbated the difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK.”

The latest instalment of the four part series covers 1980 to 1992. It is a tale of two Scotlands and contrasting fortunes, of industrial devastation and regeneration, Ravenscraig and Glasgow’s Miles Better – and the singer Sheena Easton.

The Bellshill-born Easton began the decade as the winner of a talent show, The Big Time. But in 1990 the Modern Girl singer was booed by the crowd at the Big Day concert that ended Glasgow’s reign as European city of culture. Wark says the boos were in response to Easton’s American accent.

“Scotland has always been good at knocking those who find success,” says Wark, “but this incident captured something of the tensions that had emerged in Scotland during these years.“The 1980s were a decade in which some people achieved massive success and made a ton of money, but thousands of others lost their jobs. That had a huge impact on their family, their communities, and bred a sense of anger and frustration that there were the haves and the have nots.”

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The tensions and turmoil of this period are still part still part of Scotland today, she concludes.

BBC Scotland, 10pm tonight, repeated 8pm tomorrow, and on iPlayer