The Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, won a 43-seat majority in the UK general election held on May 3, with results confirmed May 4, ending Labour's James Callaghan government. Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister, ushering in over a decade of free-market reforms, privatization, and confrontation with trade unions that reshaped British political and economic life.
Thatcher campaigned on cutting inflation, curbing union power, and reducing the state's role in the economy after years of industrial unrest culminating in the 'Winter of Discontent' of 1978-79, when strikes left rubbish uncollected and, in some cases, the dead unburied. Voters, weary of stagflation and disorder, handed the Conservatives a clear mandate.
On May 4, Thatcher traveled to Buckingham Palace to be formally appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II, then stood outside 10 Downing Street and quoted St. Francis of Assisi: 'Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.' It was a conciliatory opening line for a leader who would prove famously combative.
Over the next eleven years she privatized state industries, battled the miners' unions, fought the Falklands War, and became such a dominant figure that 'Thatcherism' entered the political lexicon as shorthand for deregulated, free-market conservatism. Her election marked a decisive rightward turn in British politics that paralleled Reagan's rise in the United States the following year.