The result showed a narrow victory for Labour Party with a minority government.

Its leader Harold Wilson was able to settle the miners’ strike, and in a second election the same year
Labour won with a small majority.
Towards the end of the decade social fragmentation across Britain was increasingly obvious, as
nationalism, terrorism, strikes, violent crime and football hooliganism all indicated an end to an
extraordinary and unprecedent period of social solidarity and consensus that had characterised the
UK since 1945.
The tension was amplified by the popular press.
Punks appeared on streets around Britain, their shocking appearance reflecting a sense of disgust with
a society which seemed to have abandoned it youth and its future.

Following their defeat in 1974 election, M. Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative Party.
Her early publicity depicted her as a happily married suburban housewife.
But at the same time she was developing economic ideas which were guided by the fashionable
theories of monetarism.
These involved reducing inflation with high interest rates, and submitting all aspects of the economy
to free-market economics and the laws of supply and demand.
The late 1970s were times of strikes and confrontation and many electors were attracted by her
forceful personality and the simple certainties of her free-market ideology. It recalled Victorian Britain
when nation and Empire were at their height.
Moreover, in a decade when political and economic achievements of feminism had been remarkable,
she would be Britain’s first woman prime minister.
Thatcher went on to lead the Conservatives to victory in the election of 1979 and the party remained in
power until 1997.
But in the early 1980s Britain’s economic crisis worsened.
Manufacturing declined and the shipbuilding, mining and steel industries disappeared.
Unemployment rose to over 13&.
The crisis seemed to deepen on 2 April 1982, when Thatcher led Britain into war with Argentina over
the occupation of the Falklands Islands. However, when the British forces emerged victorious on 14
June, Thatcher was able to exploit the moment and distract attention from the economic crisis at home.

Next, the government forged a closer alliance with the USA to develop a Cold War strategy which
involved holding nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
The government’s policies were supported by virtually all the daily newspapers: with the press on its
side, the Conservatives emerged victorious in the general election of 1983, and the economic and
political ideas which came to be known as Thatcherism began to be fully expressed and implemented.
These included a reduction of public spending and measures to privatise industries in public sector.

Next, she addressed the ‘enemy within’: these consisted of powerful trade unions, the miners,
left-wing local governments, the IRA and its supporters, immigrants, the ‘green’ members of her own
party.
She became known as ‘Iron Lady’ and passed legislation to weaken the unions’ power permanently.
There was a strong opposition against her figure, in strikes and art field.

While the expression ‘Thatcherite’ was being applied from 1979, the term ‘Thatcherism’ only began to
be heard after the British general election of the 1983 following Thatcher’s re-election.
Her majority was large enough to reject the middle road between the Conservatives and Labour