Margaret Thatcher, like all great politicians, drastically divided opinion. She was loved and hated in equal measure. No one was neutral about Margaret Thatcher. She would survive a bomb attack by the IRA at the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party Conference in 1984. She would appear on the platform a few hours later - calm, collected, defiant - she would cement her image as the Iron Lady, as a leader who would not give way.

The United Kingdom was in a shambles. The Labour government was racked by trade union militancy and economic gloom. They were also suffering the consequences of a constitutional failure over devolution to Scotland and Wales. 

1979 would see the culmination of these Labour failures, and Britain’s “winter of discontent” would give rise to Margaret Thatcher and 18 years of Conservative rule.

Prime Minister James Callaghan would confess to one of his advisers before the election in 1979: “There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea change – and it is for Mrs Thatcher.”

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