No devolution—Mrs T

Not an urgent matter for Scots

Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher yesterday ruled out any concessions on home rule to appease Scotland, where the Conservatives put in a disastrous performance in the General Election.

Insisting that Tory policies were right for all the UK, she told Scottish party activists in Edinburgh: “The Conservatives have got the best tunes, but we are just not singing them loud enough” .

She said that, despite the election result, Conservative policies were now “winning” in Scotland.

She urged her troops to beat the drum for the policies by talking politics at local level, as well as doing the day-to-day political work of fund-raising and holding events such as coffee mornings.

Mrs Thatcher, speaking at a private reception for 200 party workers, insisted that Scottish devolution was not a real electoral issue.

Much of so-called “Thatcherism” was the philosophy of celebrated Scottish economist Adam Smith, who wrote “The Wealth of Nations” , she said.

The reception was Mrs Thatcher's first stop on a three-day tour of Scotland, her first public visit north of the Border since the June General Election in which 11 Scottish Tory M.P.s lost their seats.

Out of 72 Scottish seats, only 10 are Tory-held. The cities of Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee have not a single Conservative M.P. between them.

Mrs Thatcher's visit comes less than a week after a big post-election organisational shake-up of the Scottish Conservative Party.

It included the appointment of a party chief executive, Mr John Mackay, who lost his Argyll seat at the election, with five specialist directors working under him.

After the party reception, Mrs Thatcher went on to tour Edinburgh police HQ and be briefed on the work of the drug squad.

At one stage Mrs Thatcher, herself a qualified chemist, peered through a police forensic department microsope at a lump of suspected cannabis resin.

As she left police HQ she denied a suggestion from one questioner that she was “complacent” and said that new technology was helping create prosperity.

She eventually silenced her TV questioner, saying: “You can't do without enterprise and initiative.

“Unless someone had the enterprise and initiative to have television you would not have a job.”

In her private speech to the party faithful, Mrs Thatcher, while convinced that Government policies were essential and paying off, apparently remained puzzled by their rejection in Scotland.

Mrs Thatcher showed no sign of yielding on devolution for Scotland, promised by every other political party but firmly resisted by the Conservatives.

She said it was not a “live” issue, a point she repeated at the later Press conference

The Prime Minister will be in Aberdeen today to meet about 300 of the party faithful at a reception in a city hotel—and the Tories' battered image in Scotland will be high on the agenda.

Mrs Thatcher is expected to spend the weekend at Balmoral.