 In the Cabinet reshuffle of September 1981, Lawson was promoted to the position of Secretary of State for Energy.In this role his most significant action was to prepare for what he saw as an inevitable full-scale strike in the coal industry (then state-owned since nationalisation by the post-war Labour party government of Clement Attlee) over the closure of deep coal mines whose uneconomic operation accounted for the coal industry's business losses and consequent requirement for state subsidy.He was a key proponent of the Thatcher Government's privatisation policy.