MacGregor - Ian 01

Signed page - (1912-1998) MacGregor spent the youth of his career in the USA, after managing a takeover US firm that created strike action, having his car overturned by pickets and being threatened by the Mafia, he decided to move back to the UK where he developed a reputation for no-nonsense with trade unions and an appetite for confrontation.

By 1979, Thatcher was looking at industrial restructuring, she appointed him to run British Steel that was losing £1.8 billion annually. He instigated plant closures and redundancies but, poised the company in a profitable direction. In 1983, he was head of the National Coal Board (NCB), approved in person by Thatcher where Arthur Scargill branded him the "the American butcher of British industry, against a backdrop of strikes and redundancies.