What legislation did Thatcher help enact to break the Trade Unions in Britain?
Mrs Thatcher did not break the Unions by legislation. Certainly, her government passed laws on picketing, the closed shop, and secret ballots prior to industrial action; but basically she broke them by confrontation. It’s complex; but on a simplistic level, the Unions had come to believe, through the Seventies that they could get what they want; that if they took the government on in a straight fight, the government would eventually back down. Mrs Thatcher didn’t. She made THEM back down. The last great confrontation was with the miners in 1984 (background to the film Billy Elliot, by the way). The miners thought they could repeat past triumphs. They were wrong. It was long-drawn-out and deeply unpleasant; but at the end of it something fundamental had changed in Britain. Whether for the better or the worse is open to debate.
