"Instead of flexibility and nous following that decimation , the Government offered the Scots only admonition and insult. The Scots were told memorably by the then Minister for Trade and Industry ...that they lacked "the enterprise culture"—Scots, from the land of Adam Smith, James Watt, Logie Baird and the world's finest engineers and scientists. We were told in a memorable editorial in a yellow newspaper to "Stop yer snivellin' Jock." We were told that the Thatcher revolution must be pressed home in Scotland, albeit on an unwilling population. So the poll tax, rejected by four out of every five Scots, had to go ahead and ... he privatisation of electricity and the steel industry are to be hammered home on this sullen, ungrateful Scottish population, with all the subtlety and resolute approach of Lord North dealing with the American colonies more than 200 years ago. ... The result of this arrogance and insensitivity has been an unprecedented rise in nationalism and nationalist feeling in Scotland. Anyone who denies that is simply flying in the face of reality. That nationalism is taking the form, as it did at Govan and as it has done in every opinion poll, pub, work place and street corner, in a virulent hatred of the Government who are imposing these alien policies on an unwilling population."
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