ABSTRACT
The chaos that characterised British political activity throughout the 1970s culminated in the 1979 defeat of amiable James Callaghan’s Labour government by implacable Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives. Trade unions were generally held responsible for the economic problems of the 1970s and the coal miners’ union organised a strike in 1984 to protest against the closing of uneconomic pits. The government stockpiled coal to feed power stations and won a year-long conflict. Since the post-war reforms of the 1940s state-owned, strike-ridden monopolies had controlled service industries. New legislation replaced the state providers of water, electricity, gas, telephones and public transport with competing phalanxes of privately owned companies, and a publicity campaign in the press and broadcasting encouraged the public to buy shares in the newly privatised services. A legislative change in 1980 allowed tenants of council properties to buy their homes at severely discounted prices.
