When the Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher won the general election of May 1979, and swept James Callaghan's Labour Party from power, the country had just witnessed the Winter of Discontent in which numerous public sector workers had staged strikes. Inflation was about 10% and some 1.5 million people were unemployed, compared to some 1 million in 1974, 580,000 in 1970 and just over 300,000 in 1964. Thatcher set about controlling inflation with monetarist policies and changing trade union legislation in an attempt to reduce the strikes of public-sector workers.