The Battle Of Orgreave During The Miners Strike
Cabinet papers published under the 30-year rule today show in details how Margaret Thatcher’s set out to crush trade unions in the 1980s. Cabinet papers reveal that she told the head of her policy unit to ‘neglect no opportunity to erode trade union membership.
 “We must see to it our new legal structure discourages trade union membership of the new industries,” wrote Ferdinand Mount, then head of her policy unit.
A detailed news item published in The Guardian  reports that the papers show Mount’s demand to ensure that trade union members had to opt in, rather than opt out of the political levy – was regarded as a step too far even by Thatcher, who worried it would open up the discussion on companies funding the Tories.
The papers show Thatcher’s manufacturing of the Miners strike and show how the Tories planned to withstand a coal strike in 1983, a year before pit closures sparked the strike in March 1984.
