By Europe's standards, a quiet affair

In the centre of the Fair City of Perth, campaigners are preparing for today's crucial vote. Posters, megaphones, leaflets, flags. One of Scotland's best known politicians stands on the High Street, as part of a campaign to drum up support. Today's Scottish referendum could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom itself. In short, a moment of history.

But Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, does not get an excited response, among the voters of Perth. He chats for a while to three schoolgirls, who listen with faintly bored expressions to what he has to say.

The lack of drama in Perth - a seat held by the pro-independence SNP - is reflected across Scotland, although one woman has done more this week than anybody else to boost the sluggish Yes Yes campaign: Baroness Thatcher probably drove many Scots into the arms of the Yes-Yessers.

Her passionately anti-devolution words reminded Scots of the finger- wagging intolerance from which they were desperate to get away. Even today, the words "Thatcher" and "poll tax" serve as a reminder that a Westminster parliament can ride roughshod over the wishes of Scottish voters. In the words of the Scotsman, Lady Thatcher herself is "living proof of the need for home rule".

Until the intervention of the former prime minister, there had been little fire in the campaign. The apparent willingness of the new government to talk and to listen, and the respect for the Scottish Secretary, Donald Dewar means that few are as passionately anti-Westminster as they used to be.

One Glaswegian notes the obvious paradox: "If the Tories were still running things, it would be a stronger Yes. But if they were running things, there'd be no referendum."

Scotland has sometimes seemed in the past few years to fall into a European pattern for the 1990s. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania broke away from Moscow; neat little Slovenia (which lacked the ethnic complexities of Croatia or Bosnia) broke away from Yugoslavia; Slovaks sliced themselves away from the Czechs. Independence for new countries - unthinkable, for four decades - was suddenly fashionable, in the new Europe. Meanwhile, Scottish anger at London's arrogance was great.

In Moscow and Belgrade, the parallels with Scotland seemed obvious. "What would you [English] do, if Scotland tried to destroy the United Kingdom?" Russians and Serbs repeatedly asked, when explaining why they had to use force, to prevent secession. I pleaded ignorance on the constitutional details.

But I assured my questioners that no government in London would send tanks up the M1, to bring the Scots under control. I was greeted with disbelief. "When push comes to shove...," they seemed to retort.

Violent suppression apart, Lady Thatcher still appears to subscribe to a "never-mind-the-people" philosophy. She declared in Glasgow this week: "A majority vote won't make something that is fundamentally wrong right." But resistance to change has usually been counter-productive.

The "you-must-not" philosophy, in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, was an important factor in creating a singleness of purpose among pro-independence campaigners there. When Slovenia held a referendum on independence in December 1990 (tanks were sent in, a few months later), excited Slovenes wanted to talk of little else. The contrast with Scotland - where most people say that they have not even discussed the subject in recent days - could hardly be greater.

Even in democratic Czechoslovakia, the lack of give-and-take hastened the break-up of the federation. "All or nothing," said Prague's Thatcher- loving prime minister, Vaclav Klaus. So the Slovaks, resenting the ever- snooty Czechs (echoes of the Scottish-English relationship, at its trickiest), took all. In 1992, they packed their bags and left. The velvet divorce was less than velvet; it left bitterness on both sides.

In Britain, such a not-quite-velvet divorce might still happen. But a closer comparison may be with western Europe, where movements for greater autonomy have been less about candlelit crowds and romantic singsongs, more about constitutional nitty-gritty - and tolerance. Germany prides itself on its stability, partly because power is so devolved. The Spanish region of Catalonia has been allowed a considerable degree of autonomy, and the pressure for full independence has fallen.

Tam Dalyell, Labour's leading dissident anti-devolution campaigner, insists that the proposed Scottish parliament is a "motorway without an exit". He fears full independence, just as SNP activists hope for it. But, if Scottish voters are wary about even taking the modest step of creating a Scottish parliament, then they are likely to be still warier of full independence.

Only if Thatcher-style ghosts return to haunt Scotland, imposing a twenty- first century equivalent of the loathed poll tax, does separatist feeling look set to grow.

The Labour government hopes that the proposed creation of a Scottish parliament means that we have now passed the high-water mark of secessionist feeling. Conversely, a bout of seriously bad English behaviour may be the only hope, for the pro-independence SNP.

Tanks on the motorway would be too much to hope for, even in the most extreme scenario. But a Portillo-type leader seeking to emulate Margaret Thatcher might just do the trick.

For the SNP, a new bout of Thatcherite intolerance - not quite as bad as the Kremlin or Slobodan Milosevic, but almost - could be the ultimate dream.