Thatcher second term: Miners' Strike, Big Bang, BT and British Gas privatisations

Doctrine — stated goals and content

Intensified Thatcherite phase focused on breaking organised labour, financial-services liberalisation, mass privatisation, and tax reform favouring capital. Economic school: supply-side-right with Lawson pro-growth tax-cutting emphasis and City-of-London finance-capital reorientation; monetary policy drifts from pure £M3 targeting to exchange-rate shadowing of the DM by 1987. Left-right axis: right, intensifying relative to first term. Content: (i) Trade Union Act 1984 — secret ballots for industrial action; (ii) Miners' Strike March 1984 - March 1985 — NCB and government victory restructured industrial relations; (iii) British Telecom privatisation November 1984 (50.2% £3.9bn IPO) — first mass-share-ownership privatisation; (iv) Big Bang 27 October 1986 under the Financial Services Act 1986 — fixed commissions abolished, separation of jobbers and brokers ended, foreign membership of LSE; (v) British Gas privatisation December 1986 (£5.6bn); (vi) Wages Act 1986 abolishing Wages Councils for under-21s and loosening sectoral minimum-wage architecture; (vii) 1984 and 1986 Budgets cutting corporation tax from 52% to 35% with capital-allowance reform (broader base, lower rate); (viii) Public Order Act 1986 responding to Miners' Strike and urban disturbances; (ix) British Airways privatisation February 1987 (£900m); (x) BAA Act 1986 preparing BAA privatisation July 1987. Popularity signals: 1983 general election 42.4% / 397 seats, personal approval high post-Falklands; 1984 Miners' Strike polarised opinion but Conservatives retained double-digit poll leads most of 1985-86; Westland affair January 1986 damaged Thatcher temporarily; Lawson economic boom 1986-87 + Labour's continued disarray under Kinnock delivered 11 June 1987 election win — Conservatives 42.2% / 376 seats, 102-seat majority. Coherence: the term assembled the three classic Thatcher legacies (weakened unions + privatised utilities + liberalised City) as a single mutually-reinforcing programme; macroeconomic boom from 1986-87 masked emerging overheating (Lawson Boom), setting up the ERM/inflation problems of the third term.