(03 Jan 2014, 8:43 pm)andreos1 wrote As much as I wished FOI could have been implemented back then, there was no way in this world she would have allowed it.

Everyone had an opinion of her, the facts seem to backing up the ideas and suggestions the left were making back then.

Just thinking how different the country would have been if she had been forced into calling a general election back in the 80's.

Yep, she was far too much of a control freak to allow anything close to that.

Whilst I agree that the country would have been a different place if she was forced to call a general election in the mid-80's, I also worry to think in what way different it would have been. The potential backlash something like this would have caused, not to mention the turn in public opinion, would have surely lead to a Labour majority - a majority lead by Neil Kinnock.

I find people seem to forget that Kinnock was openly critical to the tactics (not the dispute) imposed by Arthur Scargill and the NUM at the time. I'm in no way condoning strike action without a membership ballot, but the far left were rife in the Labour party at the time. I really think this would have ended in complete division and despair for the Labour party if they were in power at the time of the 1984 strike.