Thatcher

Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher wanted to crush power of the trade unions even before she had won her historic 144-seat majority landslide victory. 

At the May 1979 election Mrs Thatcher squeaked into Downing Street with a 30-seat majority.

Her economic policies helped weaken the unions. The recession of the early 1980s saw manufacturing, the main area of union strength, shrink by half while unemployment soared to over three million. Union membership plummeted from a peak of 12 million in the late 70s to almost half that by the late 80s. She appointed her henchman Norman Tebbit as employment secretary. Though a former leader of the BALPA pilots' union, it was a job he relished.

He set about stripping the unions of their legal protection. Flying pickets, the shock troops of industrial warfare, were banned and could no longer blockade factories, ports, public bodies and much more during disputes. Strike ballots became compulsory. The closed shop, which forced people to join a union if they were seeking employment in a particular trade, was outlawed.

The 1981 Hunger Strikes

The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during "the Troubles" by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out", the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days.

The second hunger strike took place in 1981 and was a showdown between the prisoners and the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was elected as a Member of Parliament during the strike, prompting media interest from around the world. The strike was called off after ten prisoners had starved themselves to death—including Sands, whose funeral was attended by 100,000 people.^[1] The strike radicalised Irish nationalist politics, and was the driving force that enabled Sinn Féin to become a mainstream political party.

On 14 September 1976, newly convicted prisoner Kieran Nugent began the blanket protest, in which IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners refused to wear prison uniform and either went naked or fashioned garments from prison blankets. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), this escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. These protests aimed to re-establish their political status by securing what were known as the "Five Demands":

1. the right not to wear a prison uniform;
2. the right not to do prison work;
3. the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
4. the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
5. full restoration of remission lost through the protest.

Below is a documentary about Bobby sands and the 1981 Hungerstrike. It shows the things they went through trying to get the status as 'political prisoners' instead of prisoners that had to wear uniforms and do prison work. 

Above is a list of the 10 hunger strikers that died in 1981 because Margaret Thatcher never granted them the status 'Political prisoners' they all starved themselves. \

Above is other participants that were involved in the hunger strike.

The British press hailed the hunger strike as a triumph for Thatcher, with The Guardian newspaper stating "The Government had overcome the hunger strikes by a show of resolute determination not to be bullied". However, the hunger strike was a Pyrrhic victory for Thatcher and the British government. Thatcher became a republican hate figure of Cromwellianproportions, with Danny Morrison describing her as "the biggest bastard we have ever known". There was extensive international condemnation of the British government's handling of the hunger strike, and the relationship between the British and Irish governments was strained. As with internment in 1971 and Bloody Sunday in 1972, IRA recruitment was boosted, resulting in a new surge of paramilitary activity. There was an upsurge of violence after the comparatively quiet years of the late 1970s, with widespread civil disorder in Northern Ireland and rioting outside the British Embassy in Dublin. Security forces fired 29,695 plastic bullets in 1981, causing seven deaths, compared to a total of around 16,000 bullets and four deaths in the eight years following the hunger strikes. The IRA continued its armed campaign during the seven months of the strike, killing 13 policemen, 13 soldiers, including five members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and five civilians. The seven months were one of the bloodiest periods of the Troubles with a total of 61 people killed, 34 of them civilians. Three years later the IRA tried to take their revenge on Thatcher with the Brighton hotel bombing, an attack on the Conservative party conference that killed five people and in which Thatcher herself only narrowly escaped death.

Below is a video about why people hated Margaret Thatcher.