Until the mid-1970s, the Conservative Party was mostly controlled by one-nation conservatives. The rise of the New Right in conservative politics led to a critique of one-nation conservatism. The New Right thinkers contended that Keynesian economics and the welfare state had damaged the economy and society. The Winter of Discontent of 1978–1979 in which trades unions took industrial action with a wide impact on daily life was portrayed by the New Right as illustrative of the over-extension of the state. Figures such as Margaret Thatcher believed that to reverse the national decline it was necessary to revive old values of individualism and challenge the dependency culture which they felt had been created by the welfare state.