Thatcher's government systematically and deliberately set about destroying what she and it thought were inefficient, dead industries, presumably in the hope that the clean sweep and the hidden hand of free enterprise would miraculously conjure up new, efficient ones. And of course to defeat the unions. It didn't work very well, but that didn't matter because their real heart was in the financial sector, as it always had been.
When "New Labour" was elected, they had no more interest in industry than the Tories did. This wasn't the Labour Party of Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, or even Neil Kinnock. This was the new breed of smart Alec "third-way"-ers. The thought of someone like Mandy Mandelson in charge of trade and industry is laughable. He clearly has never had his hands dirty in his life.