1. Deregulation, Taxation and Inflation Paper 1: Key Question: What impact did Thatcher’s government (1979 – 90) have on Britain 1979 – 97?

2. Taxation and Incentives Homework: Make notes on taxation and incentives. Explain the positive and negative effects.

3. The Fight Against the Trade Unions Trade Union Legislation Tackling the trade unions was part of Thatcher’s overall economic policy to reduce the influence of socialist institutions, and promote individualism and popular capitalism; but the conflict was also an inevitable result of her focus on realigning the British economy away from heavy industry and towards financial services. Thatcher had been part of the Health government that had lost power partly due to the miners’ strike of 1974 and, although she was keen to smash the power of the trade unions, she was prepared to bide her time and avoid the mistakes made by her predecessor. In her view, trade unions bullied individual workers into joining them, forced them into strike action they often had no wish to take part in and acted irresponsibly with no regard for democratically elected government.

4. Their power was undermined gradually through a series of Employment Acts: The 1980 Act meant workers did not have to join a union when they joined a particular firm (the so-called ‘closed shop’): it also meant unions could only organise strikes against their direct employees and were not allowed to strike in sympathy with other workers. The 1982 Act meant the unions could be sued for illegal strike action. The 1984 Trade Union Act meant that a strike had to be approved by the majority of union members in a secret ballot before it was legal. In the same year, Thatcher also built up coal reserves that would enable the government to resist a miners’ strike without restoring to a three-day week as Heath had done. The Fight Against the Trade Unions Trade Union Legislation

5. The Miner’s Strike and the Decline of Heavy Industry In the event, Thatcher was very fortunate in her enemy: NUM President Arthur Scargill made several tactical errors that undermined the miners’ strike. 1.The strike began on 6 March 1984, just as the UK emerged from winter and demanded less energy. 2.Scargill didn’t ballot NUM members about the strike action, choosing instead to launch the strike with ‘flying pickets’. 3.This caused miners in Nottingham to leave the NUM and set up their own union, which voted to keep their mines open. 4.Lastly, Scargill lost public sympathy due to what were seen as provocative methods: his public disapproval never fell below 79 percent throughout the year-long strike. The strike was finally defeated on 3 March 1985, almost a year to the day after it began, although the miners in Kent held out for a further two weeks.

6. Unions became far more willing to work with government legislation following the defeat of the NUM. The total number of trade unions members fell from 13.5 million in 1979 to under 10 million in 1990; the total number of working days lost to strike action fell from 10.5 million in 1980-84 to 0.8 million in 1990-94. The coal industry had become increasing uncompetitive since the war and pit closures had led to large-scale redundancies since the 1960s. It is likely that the coal industry would have been scaled back at a slower pace had it not been for the strike. The Miner’s Strike and the Decline of Heavy Industry

7. After the bitter struggle with the miners, a series of Employment Acts in 1988, 1989 and 1990 weakened trade unions further. After Thatcher's resignation in 199, trade unions membership fell again to 6.7 million in 1997. The removal of government subsidies for struggling older industries also saw a decline in the percentage of the labour force employment in manual labour from 47percent in 1974 to 36 percent in 1991. The number of miners fell from 200,000 to 10,000 in the same period. The Miner’s Strike and the Decline of Heavy Industry

8. Many local communities were greatly affected by the end of a local industry, such as shipbuilding in Sunderland, and steel manufacturing in Sheffield (as depicted in the 1997 film The Full Monty). The impact of Thatcher’s anti-union legislation and action is a source of emotional disagreement. Critics argue that she caused unnecessary suffering to whole communities who relied on mining and other industries and that not enough was done to encourage other forms of employment in former mining areas. The Miner’s Strike and the Decline of Heavy Industry

9. Work in pairs: Highlight the three extracts  One colour for ‘evidence’  One colour for ‘conclusions’  One colour for language that shows the historian is ‘reasoning’ (e.g. therefore, so) How do the extracts differ in terms of the way that the evidence is used? Which of these extracts do you find most convincing? Which has the best-supported arguments? What other information might you want in order to make a judgement about the strength of these claims? Write a paragraph of 200 words explaining the importance of using evidence to support historical claims. The Miner’s Strike and the Decline of Heavy Industry