Women’s liberation and the miners strike 40 years on

Well said sister!

Well that was a right emotional watch. Both angry and bereft.
The pit blown up at the end.
I just looked in the mirror, it seems yesterday and yet so long ago.

You know, I was thinking about TRA tactics too. Visits from cops and being arrested for GC beliefs.
Same old.
Those young women! I can see myself in them can you?

Three months for smashing a window you didn't smash.🙄

Hiya back! A bit choked up too, I'm on the plus 1 watch. So started at 10.
Everyone so young! I felt straight back there did you?
A bit of a mixed feeling about it being Shirebrook. Not sure if it's going to really be about Community or about the ballot politics.
Let's see how it goes.

Also watching. Many thanks for the reminder.

Just seen this is about to start on C4 but means you can watch on C4+1 at 10pm.

Not sure if it covers all areas but first episode about Derbyshire from a quick read.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/miners-strike-1984-the-battle-for-britain

I thought some on this thread might be interested in this. Suspect aimed at theorists rather than actual participants, but could be worth sending in accounts of actual experience!

For historians, Beyond the Fragments challenges pessimistic narratives of socialist decline and Neoliberal triumph, and provides a framework for some of the extraordinary solidarity movements (around the miners strike, Greenham Common, and latterly the anti-globalisation movement) that followed.

For theorists, it raises fascinating questions about the influence of second-wave feminism on political organising, the limits of Leninism, and the value of life-writing for informing political strategy.

For contemporary activists, it may also still offer an inspiring and insightful guide to creating a socialist politics that empowers and unifies diverse and fragmentary experiences of oppression.

http://www.womensgrid.org.uk/?p=23639

It's the organising within a stuggle that raises consciousness for most working class women. No woman is ever her former self again.

It was about power, and it was a strike deliberately engineered by Thatcher to destroy the unions by making an example of the NUM, arguably the most powerful union in the country.

Agree. I said in an earlier post this strike and particularly the Battle of Orgreave politicised me (along with Bloody Sunday).

And yes the very basis of Women's Liberation was (and it is really sad we have lost this) local women coming together to discuss what they had in common and from that what action / activities they wanted to take. If where you live is under threat than for local women undoubtedly this threat would be a priority, rather than the more reflective consciousness raising.

One of the most shocking scenes in the film Billy Elliot was when the schoolkids are walking along the side of a house and the girl is dragging a stick along the wall and then the wall changes seamlessly into a line of police with riot shields (because the strike was going on). It became the backdrop to so many lives.

Banner in 1981
https://www.search.connectinghistories.org.uk/details.aspx?ResourceID=836&ExhibitionPage=2&ExhibitionID=825&SearchType=2&ThemeID=17

Yes, it was so important that the kids were protected as much as possible. Hard enough that they were in hand me downs, relied on the kitchens and parcels. I had to smile at @stomachameleon meeting the Flying Pickets. Better than sodding Billy Bragg any day.
Does anyone remember Banner Theatre? They were great and went on to do so many fundraisers for all sorts of disputes and struggles. I'll give them a mention. I'm remembering all the fund raisers now instead of cracking on with what I'm supposed to be doing.
https://www.search.connectinghistories.org.uk/details.aspx?ResourceID=836&ExhibitionPage=2&ExhibitionID=835&SearchType=2&ThemeID=17

@Brefugee Yes, that's exactly the point - people stuck together and made sure kids didn't suffer. But they certainly have suffered since then - the jobs have never been replaced with anything comparable (leaving aside the dangers of mining, it was relatively well-paid).

@Brefugee the Army is still like that. Army spouses support Army spouses (still mostly women but a few men now)

wasn't some of that the point though? That the children had a good childhood despite what was going on?

(in a sort of similar but not the same vein: i grew up an Army kid and when the men were away for 6 months at a time, often over Christmas, the women all made sure to look out for each other, help the strugglers and always ensured that we children didn't know about their worries etc. It is a very feminist thing to do)

Quite a few of the people I spoke to said something similar. Their communities, especially the women, did such an amazing job of fundraising and organising trips and home stays that the kids ended up having fun, although wouldn't have fully understood the struggles their parents were going through.

Hi all. I was born 78 and my dad was a miner at the Kent collieries... bettsanger, tilminstone etc. My first memory was going on the pit bus with my dad to get his wages. He was an active member of the NUM and a big fan of scargill. My dad is in his sixties now and there are still members of his family he doesn't get along with as they were scabs....

It was a hard time financially. I remember food parcels coming from Belgium and being sent (age 4) on a coach trip to London by myself with a group of miners kids! We used to eat at a big communal kitchen in the villages. I met the flying pickets at the local num office :)

Sorry probably not on thread point but as a kid it was great!

So I have a hard time getting nostalgic about or celebrating the miners' strike from a feminist perspective. Always felt all those women working to support the miners without demanding support for women to be allowed down mines were letting us down

I was a young, radical, left-wing trades unionist during the Miners Strike. Not so young now, but nothing else has changed.

How blind are you to working class history? Have you ANY idea how hard it was to get women (and children) out of the pits. Dear God, the men that worked the mines worked in sub-human conditions with life-threatening danger an ever present part of their lives. You actually think that it is "feminist" to argue that we should have been fighting to get women back down the mines? Children too, or is that where you draw trhe line? Even miners knew that mining was a god-awful job, and I never met a miner who wanted that for their children. The MIners Strike was not about mining, it was not about it being a desirable employment, and it wasn't even about pit closures per se because every miner knew that fossil fuels had no long term future even back then. It was about power, and it was a strike deliberately engineered by Thatcher to destroy the unions by making an example of the NUM, arguably the most powerful union in the country.

And to their everlasting shame, the Labour Party and some union leaders allowed her to do it. As for Sir Keir, that warror for the working class, praising Thatcher for ANYTHING, I have watched him refuse to stand with workers, punish MP's for supporting picket lines, tell Labour Party members that Party policy no longer determines anuthing, and now... praising Thatcher? At the age of 66, having voted Labour literally for a lifetime (often because there was nothing better on offer, to be fair) I will not vote in the next general election. Generations of my family would turn in their graves if I voted for that self-serving b**d.

But on a lovely note, my best friend found me a Miner Strike "Coal not Dole" mug for part of my Christmas present. Despite the harshness of the times and the circumstances, they were great days - and ones where we knew who the enemy was.

thanks for the recs of Backbone of the Nation - have it on pre-order as a paperback.

And thank you @40yearsafterminersstrike I'm going to check out your link now.

@NumberTheory do you not think that you're somewhat stamping all over women's real lived experiences?

I was an adult (i was in the army, and some of the police were based in the barracks where my dad was posted) when the miners strike happened. I'm from Sheffield and the effect of that strike on that city (as many others) has been devastating. Despite all the talk about it being a centre of excellence for engeineering firms etc. I hadn't realised so many of the buildings were pale sandstone - as a kid they were all black. The place smelled of coal dust and if the wind was in the right direction and you had a cold, black snot was A Thing.

Sometimes when i go to some parts of the Ruhrgebiet where there is still a tiny coal industry, and get a whiff of that coal dust, it's like getting off the train in Sheffield, as a kid, and getting the bus to my grandma and grandad's house.

For me? There is nothing more feminist than banding together with other women and saving your family from penury and near starvation.