Watch Tory Tory Tory online: Episode 2 The Path To Power

This edition tells the story of a collection of mavericks and outsiders who set out to help Margaret Thatcher kick start a political revolution. The monetarist policies used to defeat inflation caused large-scale unemployment. Riots broke out across Britain, there was growing dissent even inside the government. How would Mrs Thatcher survive her plummeting popularity? Merchant banker John Gouriet, convinced of an imminent Soviet takeover of Britain through the trade union movement, works with T.V. personalities Ross and Norris McWhirter to establish the Freedom Association dedicated to fighting the left. Their early campaign against the Provisional Irish Republican Army linked to the Soviet Union, resulted in the assassination of Ross, which they blamed on the KGB. The resulting publicity boost drew support from important figures including Thatcher the new leader of the opposition. Thatcher, unpopular within her own party, appointed moderates to her cabinet including Shadow Employment Secretary Jim Prior who was charged with trade union policy. The Grunwick dispute became a cause celebre as the Freedom Association saw their opportunity to take on the unions directly. The mail order business was crippled by the Post Office’s refusal to collect the post but the Freedom Association saved the business and broke the strike by smuggling out the films in a midnight raid. Divisions within the shadow cabinet were heightened when Thatcher’s close ally Sir Keith Joseph Bt. established the independent Centre for Policy Studies where John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss produced a strategic plan that called for a revolutionary free market government to tackle the problems caused by the trade unions. Thatcher distributed the plan to senior colleagues and seized the opportunity to push it forward following the crippling union actions of the Winter of Discontent that resulted in the Conservative victory in the 1979 general election. Thatcher placed allies in key economic posts, including Hoskyns and Strauss at the Number 10 Policy Unit, to push forward monetarist policy. A revolt in Thatcher’s Cabinet prompted a reshuffle to oust opponents such as Prior and bring in loyalist such as Cecil Parkinson but a leadership contest looked imminent. Thatcher’s popularity and her revolution were given a boost by the successful defence of the Falklands, and the improving economy.

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