MARGARET Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in May 1979 against a background of widespread strikes and the so-called Winter of Discontent which brought down the Labour Government.

During the 1970s, an average of 13 million working days were lost through strikes every year.

Margaret Thatcher intended to change all that, and set about curbing union power through banning secondary picketing and introducing legislation to make it harder for strikes to be called.

To a great extent her tactics were successful, and popular with a large portion of the electorate who had been alienated by the power cuts and three-day week under Edward Heath, and the damaging strikes under James Callaghan.

However, they did not prevent the most damaging industrial dispute to affect the country since the General Strike of 1926 – the miners’ strike of 1984-85, when pitmen from Scotland to Kent fought to defend their communities against the Government’s pit closure plan.

Nor did the discontent end with the election of a Conservative government.

The winter may have subsided into spring but the troubles continued in the form of a bitter and sometimes violent national steel strike, followed a year later by inner-city riots which rocked the nation.

Margaret Thatcher’s initial successes were on the home front, rather than on the industrial front where her policy of nonintervention cut a destructive swathe through the traditional heartlands of heavy industry.

Her policies on council house sales, pension deregulation, education reform, free trade, health service reform, privatisation and trade union reform were welcomed by large sections of the population and played a crucial part in determining the courses of future governments – including the Labour administration of Sedgefield MP Tony Blair.

The Centre for Policy Studies, a centre-right think tank, played a prominent role in initiating many of these policies.

The think tank was founded in 1974 by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, her close friend and ally who was regarded as the power behind the Thatcher throne and the architect of Thatcherism.

But while her policies found favour with those on the right of the political spectrum, and with countless thousands of working and middle-class people who admired her strength of character, there were some prominent members of her own party, including two former prime ministers, who openly criticised her regime.

Edward Heath, her immediate predecessor, was never one to conceal his contempt for the woman who robbed him of his leadership. More wounding, though, were the remarks made by the respected Tory statesman Harold Macmillan, the Earl of Stockton, who likened her privatisation programme to the selling off of the family silver.

Did any of this criticism sway Margaret Thatcher from her determined and controversial course across the grain of British politics?

No. Not for one moment.