As if we didn’t know

Downing Street papers from 1983 show Thatcher told her policy unit, that she agreed that Norman Tebbit's gradualist approach to trade union reform was too timid and that they should "neglect no opportunity to erode trade union membership".

 As early as January 1983, Nigel Lawson , her Treasurer, who had already spent two years as energy secretary building up coal stocks in preparation for the expected showdown with the miners – was telling Thatcher: "If Scargill succeeds in bringing about such a strike, we must do everything in our power to defeat him, including ensuring that the strike results in widespread closures." Lawson also argued for a rapid acceleration in the pace of the pit closures secretly scheduled for 1983/84, demanding that 34 pits, including a dozen in Yorkshire and the Midlands, should be listed, rather than the 20 that eventually sparked the start of the strike in March 1984.

 The National Archives reveal  a debate among Whitehall officials over whether troops should be used during the miners' strike were well under way.

  Peter Gregson, the Cabinet Office deputy secretary, was telling her that using the army to move coal by road would be a formidable undertaking: "4-5,000 lorry movements a day for 20 weeks … the law and order problems of coping with pickets would be enormous … a major risk would be the power station workers would refuse to handle coal brought in by servicemen this way".

Although there might be a limited role for the troops in delivering ancillary materials, such as lighting-up oil, under close supervision. Thatcher was careful not to close the door on the use of the army to move coal from the working pits to the power stations, and ordered further work to be done.

 In the following May, the issue was reopened when the Cabinet Office derided such uses of the army as "spectacular gestures which are likely in practice to worsen the situation". Brigadier Tony Budd, secretary of the civil contingencies unit in the Cabinet Office, took exception, pointing out that this had not been the case when the army was used for "firefighting, providing an emergency ambulance service, refuse collection and even providing emergency car parking in London", despite some union "huffing and puffing".

In the event, the paramilitary use of the police rather than the army was suffice to club the pickets into defeat.