Maggie’s Lucky Strike

Twenty years ago this autumn Britain was halfway through the miners' strike of 1984-85. There were regular skirmishes between police and miners around the picket Unes, as well as extensive media coverage of the attempts to achieve a negotiated settlement. But the country at large was remarkably unaffected.  At no point were electricity supplies restricted. After almost a year the miners returned to work without achieving their objectives. The strike was a major political event in the course of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, and the government’s victory gave an important boost to its programme to rein back the power of the trades unions. What has not been generally recognised, however, was how lucky the Government was to avoid defeat, as Edward Heath’s Government had been defeated by the mineworkers a decade before.