Forty years ago, Margaret Thatcher was elected on a manifesto to transform Britain. After a decade of industrial action, rising unemployment and economic stagnation, there was widespread consensus that such a transformation was overdue. Spurred on by a group of right-wing economists, themselves sponsored by some of the biggest names in international finance, Thatcher campaigned to subject a profligate country to the disciplining logic of the market.

Her central policies — privatizing state assets, attacking the country’s unions, and cutting taxes on the rich — were as unpopular in the year she was elected as they were before, and remain today. But her appeals to self-interest — creating a nation of homeowners, cutting income tax and restoring order — won out. Thatcher’s victory came on the back of the switched allegiances of working-class voters in the South and the Midlands.

The aim of Thatcherism was to “modernize” the British economy by reviving the City’s role as the financial center of the world and cultivating ancillary industries in professional services. Doing so required transforming the productive base of the British economy, shrinking the state, and going to war with the country’s unions.