Extract from the 'Ridley Plan'' (Economy: Report of Nationalised Industries Policy Group (leaked Ridley report) | Margaret Thatcher Foundation)
For a number of reasons, the ruling class in Britain came to play a spearhead role in the capitalist economic and political offensive against the working class from the start of the 1980s.
The British economy was one of the worst hit by the capitalist economic crisis that appeared in the 1960s. In historical decline since the loss of empire, British capital was chronically uncompetitive and saddled with unprofitable nationalised industries.
With the revival of class struggle and social unrest in the late 1960s Britain also saw important workers’ strikes, in particular by the miners, culminating in the ‘winter of discontent’ and the fall of the ruling Labour Party in 1979.
The faction of the Tory party around Margaret Thatcher that came to power was a fervent supporter of ‘free markets’ and the new monetarist policies of the right-wing faction of the American bourgeoisie, closely aligning it politically with the leader of the western imperialist bloc .
This Tory faction came to power with an explicit strategy (The Ridley Plan’) to break up and privatise the nationalised industries and confront the political threat from the working class, singling out the miners as the strongest threat.
The ‘Ridley Plan’ (innocuously titled the Final Report of the Nationalised Industries Policy Group, 1977) – the full text of which is available online at margaretthatcher.org (!) - is a sobering reminder of the ruthlessness and strategic vision of the capitalist class faced with a threat from its class enemy.
A confidential annex analyses the political threat from the working class and in military language proposes measures to counter it by provoking a “battle” in an industry where it could win; strengthening defences against an “all out attack” in a highly vulnerable industry like coal, and equipping and preparing a “large, mobile squad of police” for the expected violent confrontations.
The Ridley Plan is clear proof that the defeats experienced by the working class in Britain - above all by the miners in 1984-5 - were carefully planned well in advance.
Britain was one of the most important battlegrounds for the capitalist offensive against the working class in western Europe in the 1980s, and the British bourgeoisie – one of the oldest and most experienced factions of the ruling class in the world – was well placed to play a key role, in effect acting as the spearhead of this offensive in western Europe on behalf of the USA.
We can be sure that the Ridley Plan had its counterparts in other EEC and NATO countries at the time.
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