Margaret Thatcher's files as Prime Minister, 1985-86 (3)

1985: End of the Coal Strike

The last three months of the coal strike are covered in the latest release. Here are the full files, as well as a link to the minutes of the cabinet committee which ran the strike - by this stage meeting weekly rather than almost other day, as it had at the depths of the crisis. Officials wrote a report on lessons of the strike later in 1985, which MT felt did not get to the heart of the matter - above all did not convey a sense of how close a run thing it had all been, the outcome being open till New Year 1985.

There should be further releases on the strike during 2015 following which the site will gather together the whole archive of 1,000+ documents and reflect on their significance.

Whole file on coal strike

1983-86: Economic Issues - Chancellor Lawson, Monetary Policy, the 'Big Bang'

A whole clutch of important economic files were released covering the whole of policy-making towards the deregulation of the Stock Exchange in October 1986, known usually as the 'Big Bang'. It is far from the full story on the economic side however - we lack anything on the ERM, which was beginning to play a dominant and destructive role in the relationship between Chancellor and Prime Minister. The final Big Bang file happened to be unavailable for filming in preview, but we will return to it.

Whole files on economic policy (apologies for poor copy quality of some of these files, due to conditions at time of filming - the files will be redone in time)

1985-86: other files - local government, Mary Whitehouse