Editing Winter of Discontent (section)

===Conservative response===

Thatcher, the [[Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)|Leader of the Opposition]], had been calling for the government to declare a [[state of emergency]] to deal with the strike during the first week of January. She also called for the immediate enactment of reforms that "Stepping Stones", and before it ''In Place of Strife'' had proposed: a ban on [[secondary picketing]] of third-party businesses not targeted directly by a strike, ending [[closed shop]] contracts under which employers can only hire those already members of a union, requiring votes by [[secret ballot]] before strikes and in the elections of union officials, and securing no-strike agreements with public-sector unions that provided vital public services, such as fire, health care and utilities.<ref name="Martin 99–100">{{harvp|Martin|2009|pages=99–100}}</ref>

A week later, as the cold returned and Britons had begun filing claims for unemployment benefit by the thousands, Thatcher addressed the situation in a [[party political broadcast]]. From a small [[sitting room]] she spoke, she said, not as a politician but as a Briton. "Tonight I don't propose to use the time to make party political points", she told viewers. "I do not think you would want me to do so. The crisis that our country faces is too serious for that."<ref name="Thatcher Party Political Broadcast">{{cite web|last=Thatcher|first=Margaret|author-link=Margaret Thatcher|title=Conservative Party Political Broadcast (Winter of Discontent)|url=https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103926|publisher=Margaret Thatcher Foundation|date=17 January 1979|access-date=23 April 2020}}</ref>

The disruptions caused by the strikes had led Thatcher to "wonder what has happened to our sense of common nationhood and even of common humanity". She traced those to the unions' broad abilities to picket and strike, allowing almost any of them to "strangle the country". Most unionists, she allowed, did not support such extreme tactics.<ref name="Thatcher Party Political Broadcast" />