Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation campaign, floating state-owned industries on the stock market, introduced millions of savers to the charms of equity investment and exposed some fusty monopolies to bracing competition.
National Grid was given the treatment towards the end of Thatcher’s tenure, when critics were accusing her of scraping the barrel to sell state industries that were not suitable for the commercial world.
Yet even Thatcher shrank from selling Royal Mail, saying that she “was not prepared to have the Queen’s head privatised”, referring to the monarch’s likeness on postage stamps. In the end, it was ushered to the stock market during the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in 2013 by Sir Vince Cable to meet a European Union directive to open postal services to competition.
Royal Mail
