page_title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher
section_title: Strikes; miners and newspapers
hierarchical_section_title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher / Second term (1983–1987) / Domestic affairs / Strikes; miners and newspapers
caption_attribution_description: English: Coal mining employment in the UK, 1880-2012 (DECC data)
context_page_description: Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 4 May 1979 and served until 28 November 1990. She was elected to the position after leading the British Conservative Party since 1975.
  In domestic affairs, Thatcher is best known for her sweeping policies concerning the affairs of the economy, including the privatisation of most nationalised industries. In foreign policy, she fought a war against Argentina and played a key role with US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in ending the Cold War. By the late 1980s, she would alienate several senior members of her Cabinet with her opposition to greater economic integration into the European Community. She also alienated many Conservative voters and members of Parliament with the imposition of a local poll tax. As her support ebbed away, she was challenged for the Conservative Party leadership and persuaded by Cabinet to withdraw from the second round of voting—ending her eleven-year tenure as Prime Minister.
  Although she remains a domestically polarising figure, historians and political scientists generally rank Thatcher as an above-average Prime Minister.
context_section_description: Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions but, unlike the Heath government, adopted a strategy of incremental change rather than a single Act. Several unions launched strikes in response, but these actions eventually collapsed. Gradually, Thatcher's reforms reduced the power and influence of the unions. The changes were chiefly focused upon preventing the recurrence of the large-scale industrial actions of the 1970s, but were also intended to ensure that the consequences for the participants would be severe if any future action was taken. The reforms were also aimed, Thatcher claimed, to democratise the unions, and return power to the members. The most significant measures were to make secondary industrial action illegal, to force union leadership to first win a ballot of the union membership before calling a strike, and to abolish the closed shop. Further laws banned workplace ballots and imposed postal ballots.
  Coal miners were highly organised and had defeated Prime Minister Heath.  Thatcher expected a major confrontation, planned ahead for one, and avoided trouble before she was ready. In the end the miners' strike of 1984–85 proved a decisive victory for her—one that permanently discouraged trade unionists.  The National Coal Board received the largest amount of public subsidies going to any nationalised industry: by 1984 the annual cost to taxpayers of uneconomic pits had reached £1 billion. The year-long confrontation over strikes carried out from April 1984 by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in opposition to proposals to close a large number of unprofitable mines, proved a decisive victory for Thatcher. The Government had made preparations to counter a strike by the NUM long in advance by building up coal stocks, keeping many miners at work, and co-ordinating police action to stop massive picketing. Her policies defeated the NUM strategy of causing severe cuts in the electricity supply—the legacy of the industrial disputes of 1972 would not be repeated.
  The images of crowds of militant miners attempting to prevent other miners from working proved a shock even to some supporters of the strikes.  The NUM never held a strike vote, which allowed many miners to keep working and prevented other unions from supporting the strike. The mounting desperation and poverty of the striking families led to divisions within the regional NUM branches, and a breakaway union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM), was soon formed. More and more frustrated miners, resigned to the impending failure of the strike and worn down by months of protests, began to defy the union's rulings, starting splinter groups and advising workers that returning to work was the only viable option.
  The miners' strike lasted a full year before the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. Conservative governments proceeded to close all but 15 of the country's pits, with the remaining 15 being sold off and privatised in 1994. Private companies have since then acquired licences to open new pits and open-cast sites, with the majority of the original mines destroyed and the land redeveloped.
  The defeat of the miners' strike led to a long period of demoralisation in the whole of the trade union movement.
  The 51-week miners' strike of 1984–85 was followed a year later by the 54-week Wapping dispute launched by newspaper printers in London. It resulted in a second major defeat for unions and another victory for Thatcher's union policies, especially her assurance that the police would defend the plants against pickets trying to shut them down. The target was Britain's largest privately owned newspaper empire, News International (parent of The Times and News of the World and others, all owned by Rupert Murdoch). He wanted to introduce technological innovations that would put 90% of the old-fashioned typesetters out of work. The company offered redundancy payments of £2,000 to £30,000 to each printer to quit their old jobs. The union rejected the offer and on 24 January 1986 its 6,000 members at Murdoch's papers went on strike. Mean
caption: Annual coal mining employment in the United Kingdom since 1880. By 1990 employment fell by over 100,000.
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