After moving into 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived to be Britain's precipitous national decline.[nb 1] Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions.
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Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action.[100] Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.[101] Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.[102] According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".[103]
The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.[104][105][106] Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.[104][107][108] Scargill had refused to hold a ballot on the strike,[109] having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (January 1982, October 1982, March 1983).[110] This led to the strike's being declared illegal.[111][112]
Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."[113]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher