Editing Winter of Discontent (section)

==="Stepping Stones" and hardening of Conservative position on unionism===

[[Margaret Thatcher]] was elected [[Leader of the Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative leader]] to succeed Heath in 1975. She had been known as a member of his Cabinet, where she served as [[Secretary of State for Education]], for her advocacy of market-based solutions over government intervention in the economy, and had become convinced, as she wrote later, by that experience that the only thing more damaging to the British economy than Labour's socialist policies was her own party's attempts to emulate them. Influenced by writers such as [[Friedrich Hayek]] and [[Colm Brogan]], she came to believe the power of British unions under the [[postwar consensus]] had come at the expense of Britain as a whole.<ref name="Tara Martin Lopez 55–57">{{harvp|López|2014|pages=55–57}}</ref>

In 1977 two of her advisors, [[John Hoskyns (policy advisor)|John Hoskyns]] and Norman Strauss, prepared a report called "[[John Hoskyns (policy advisor)#The Stepping Stones Report, 1977|Stepping Stones]]" which diagrammed the [[vicious cycle]] through which they believed the unions' influence exacerbated Britain's ongoing economic difficulties, such as [[unemployment in the United Kingdom|unemployment]] and inflation. Thatcher made it available to her [[Shadow Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher|shadow cabinet]] with the authors' recommendation that they all read it.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hoskyns |first1=John |author-link1=John Hoskyns (policy advisor) |last2=Strauss |first2=Norman |title=Stepping Stones |url=https://c59574e9047e61130f13-3f71d0fe2b653c4f00f32175760e96e7.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/5B6518B5823043FE9D7C54846CC7FE31.pdf|publisher=Margaret Thatcher Foundation |date=14 November 1977|access-date=19 April 2020}}</ref> By the end of the year she had formed a steering group to develop a specific policy aimed at curbing union power under a Tory government, and a media strategy that would invest the public in this.<ref name="Tara Martin Lopez 55–57" />

To implement the media strategy, the party hired the advertising firm of [[Saatchi & Saatchi]], whose 1978 "[[Labour Isn't Working]]" campaign has been credited with persuading Callaghan not to hold an election that year.{{efn|Like his counterpart Donoughue, Hoskyns had concluded that the optimal time for an election for Labour was earlier, in the spring of 1978, with autumn being still slightly favorable, but the economic prospects unclear after that. He also preferred a later election as it would give the party the time necessary to make its case for a radical change in Britain's relations with its unions.<ref>{{harvp|Hoskyns|Strauss|1977|page=45}}</ref>}} In 1978 Britain's largest tabloid, ''[[The Sun (United Kingdom)|The Sun]]'', dropped its longtime support for Labour to instead embrace the Tories. Editor [[Larry Lamb (newspaper editor)|Larry Lamb]] met frequently with Thatcher's media advisor [[Gordon Reece]] to plan and refine strategy.<ref name="Tara Martin Lopez 18">{{harvp|López|2014|pages=18}}</ref> During the later phases of the Grunwick dispute, as strikers took to the streets to march and sometimes clashed violently with the police, the Tories began using the media coverage to leverage the critique of unionism contained in "Stepping Stones".<ref name="Tara Martin Lopez 58–59">{{harvp|López|2014|pages=58–59}}</ref>