Original upload date: Mon, 02 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Tue, 07 Dec 2021 04:23:19 GMT
Kirsty Wark interviews Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Copyright acknowledged to the British Broadcasting Corporation.
This is uploaded for historical reference only.
0:37 Lack of popularity in Scot
...
land
5:44 Community Charge / Poll Tax
16:04 The Economy
24:52 Governance of Scotland
Lorna Martin wrote in the Guardian in 2005
"Famously, Wark confronted Margaret Thatcher in a BBC interview in 1990. Downing Street demanded a replacement, insisting that the Prime Minister would only be interviewed by a man. BBC Scotland reasoned that as Wark was their top political and current affairs broadcaster, if she was not going to conduct the interview, then it was not going to happen. In the end, Bernard Ingham was forced to capitulate. During the interview Wark incensed Thatcher with a series of hostile questions about the poll tax, which had hastened the Tory wipe-out in Scotland in the 1987 general election. Thatcher tried to wrong foot Wark by calling on her to substantiate the idea that the poll tax, by now in operation, was a problem. Wark responded instantly with precise references to speeches by worried Tories. It was the interview that made Wark's name.
Afterwards Chancellor Gordon Brown, who worked in TV news before entering politics, described it as the most effective and challenging interview any national broadcaster had conducted with Thatcher."
