Margaret Thatcher's strategy for the British trade unions (1975 - 1983): an ideological priority or tactical opportunism?

Thesis

Much of the literature from the 1980s and 1990s suggests a pre-determined plan by the Conservatives to dramatically degrade the power and influence of the trade unions. Such accounts typically argue that the Thatcher governments were motivated by ideological hostility to the trade union movement, by the defeat of the previous Heath administration, and the failure of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act to reduce union powers and privileges. More recent research since 2015 using material released under the twenty-year rule has challenged this interpretation, arguing that the Party’s thinking on industrial relations between 1974 and 1979 had not, in fact, changed greatly. Even by the autumn of 1978 – the expected date for the next General Election – industrial relations represented the most underdeveloped and cautious area of Conservative policy formulation, and how a Conservative government might work with the trade unions was considered an unanswerable question by most senior Conservatives. However, within six months, the Conservatives had pledged four new items of legislative reform in their 1979 Manifesto and between 1980 and 1993. Furthermore, successive Conservative governments would enact no fewer than six Acts of Parliament used as an ever-tightening ratchet to restrict the power of the trade unions and strip them of many of their long-established legal immunities.

This thesis aims to examine in detail the development of the emerging thinking and strategy on industrial relations in the Conservative Party from the start of Thatcher’s tenure in 1975 to the end of her first administration, to answer the following research questions:
• When they came to power in 1979, did the Conservatives have a pre-formulated plan to reform the British industrial relations system and tackle the ‘union problem’?
• Who were the key individuals and bodies involved in this area of policy, both within and outside the Party, and what was Margaret Thatcher’s own ideology in this regard?
• Did the ultimate programme of legislative reform represent the execution of a Neo-Liberal plan, or were events and political opportunism the main forces at work, and were other supply-side reforms equally important in degrading the power and influence of the British trade union movement?

Authors: Birks, CT

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-o1kjxp6j9
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Neo-Liberalism; Thatcherism; industrial relations reform
• Subjects: Industrial relations