Women’s liberation and the miners strike 40 years on

@LarkLane thanks. I've recently given a TEDx talk too, which includes some of the women's stories. We're waiting for the YouTube uploads - I'll post the link on this thread when it goes live.

I was in tears at times as I wrote the book, I thought I knew the story of the strike, but I learned so much more while talking to people all these years later.

Thanks, I'm sorry I missed your post when I was writing.
I'm looking at it now!

To add to the pp, we lived in a mining area too but I worked in a textile factory.

We too saw the poverty of our NDN's, and we went through the same, minding neighbours children, feeding them, struggling ourselves because we were doing our best to support others. Horrible.

One night the lad next door knocked and asked me if I could do him a reference for an apprenticeship at a big international firm in Liverpool. I said to him, sure but I've only got this factory job to put to my name.

He said to me I know: but me Mam says there's only you and the Fish and chip shop owner left working.

The whole significance of what was going on hit me like a brick that night.

It was my own full time union officer in the factory who encouraged me back into education.

i studied PPE on the OU and the first part was an introduction to social science. A large part of it was dedicated to what the women involved in the strike (as wives, as supporters, as mineworkers - were there any? - etc) It was mostly about Wales (because tied to the concept of Hiraeth and the fact that women's work is essential) but it applies to everyone involved.

Thank you. Without you, it would have been a very very different struggle.

Thanks for starting this thread, we should never underestimate the effect the strike had on mining communities.

I've just finished writing a book about it, which includes memories of women who had a crucial role in the strike in Wales and who appeared in press photographs at the time:

https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781800995031/coal-and-community-in-wales-images-of-the-miners-strike

OP we were mainly in the factories and mills in the north midlands, my whole family (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles) were making clothes in the mills, but I remember my NDN's husband being at home for months on end because of the strikes. Wrecked their family because he couldn't feed his 5 kids. He ended up walking out on them all. We used to have their kids round at the weekends so they got fed. We couldn't afford to do it the rest of the time as we were already struggling ourselves and a lot of the time my mum didn't eat.

It feels so unfair and heartbreaking for everyone involved.

You keep talking about history but you don't seem to have read any. If you're genuinely interested in the history of mining and women in mining and are as intelligent as you pertain to be, you would know that women DID used to be allowed down the mines.

The jobs they did were shocking and horrific.

9 months pregnant pulling carts full of coal like fucking pack horses. They got banned from the mines along with children for bloody good reason. Co-opting a thread about the miners strikes to make a badly-informed point just shows you need to research.

The fact you were in a position to think about doing a degree shows you were not remotely living on the same planet as the miners on the ground doing the hard labour and you come across as thinking you're better than other women because they were miners' wives and you were going to do an actual degree in something that would mean you could presumably have some high-up clean-hands job in the top end of the mining organisation that required occasional visits to a mine sometimes and are salty that couldn't happen.

Maybe take a trip to the National Mining Museum and then come back and tell us that women were oppressed by being saved from that absolute hell where they used to be forced to give birth in the tunnels and go back to work the next day and they died in their twenties and thirties as capitalism-fodder.

I've not read it. What did you think of it? I see that you think it's a good read, but tell me more. He usually writes around France in the 1940s I see. I might put it on my Christmas present list if it's good.

I knew Anne and Betty quite well. I remember them and two other women ( sorry names escape me many years on) managing to occupy the pit at Parkside Colliery at Newton Le Willows after sneaking in with a group of teachers on an "educational" visit. That took some sorting to get them in! I've got their book somewhere, must look it out again.

It makes me so sad these days when I see women in Union positions and in Labour ceding to the likes of Izzard and co. Education unions refusing to represent members like Jo Phoenix, and allowing academic freedom to be controlled by the few. Sarah not able to access rape survivor support for women only, and women councillors in Brighton not speaking up? Am I supposed to only support the women but not to support the likes of Harry Miller or Glinner because they are men? Do they not in turn support others? Is that me supporting The Patriarchy if I stand by them? Of course not. It's the issue, not the person.

As for being harangued for not being in "feminist enough" struggles. These are real lives we are talking about. Women have fought for thousands of years to support their communities and feed their families. It's not a competition with Greenham v. WAPC as to who was best and most pure, as one poster seems to be trying to argue, for goodness sake. Divisive drivel to set women against women.

Constantly trying to derail a thread like this on FWR DOES support The Patriarchy. Why? Because none of FT's posts are even near being constructive criticism. Instead, I see a long held personal grudge, poorly disguised, and constant attempts to shut down a certain group of women from connecting about the Pit closures, some decades ago.

So you think the women at the camp achieved nothing and were looked on as a joke but I’m lauding them because of who controls the narrative? That would be the narrative that says they achieved nothing and were considered a joke?

Not understanding your logic, there. But you’ve misstated what I was saying about them anyway so probably makes little difference.

an annoying post becomes a scab i want to pick at

Whatever can you mean?!

The women at Greenham Common had a fairly big impact on the country by taking a very different and women centered approach

This is just sentimental twaddle. Unfortunately Greenham Common women had no impact on the decision made to close the air base. That was done late thanks to (male geo politics.

And their impact on the public imagination was virtually nil, and certainly less than the Miner's Wives campaign. They were just seen as ridiculous out of touch middle class hippies, and didn't get much support from women's liberation activists.

And of course did absolutely zilch to help the oppose the sex class war against women.

But ... exactly like the Miner's Wives groups gave those who participated an opportunity to work collectively, and learn and grow from that

Really bizarre to laud Greenham Women but not Miner's Wives.

I wonder if it is something to do with who controls the narrative?

(Sorry OP I know I shouldn't have responded, but the double standard got to me.)

@MrsTerryPratchett I also grew up in South London with my Dad being from a mining family... and our next door neighbour was a Met police officer sent up to the strikes. He was greatly affected by what he saw and definitely on the Miners side despite his job.

The miner’s strike threw families into poverty- there were families relying on soup kitchens to feed their kids.

Of course women would fight to support it. You don’t feed and clothe your kids by protesting that mining barred women from working down the pit🙄

The long term effects of the pit closures have destroyed communities- we’re still seeing the negative effects now. Pit villages took a hammering that they have struggled with ever since. What would be the point marching to be allowed into a career that was being binned off? Women did what they had to with an eye firmly on their families, not just their husbands. It was more than centering men. It was centering their families ability to survive.

This is about working class women whose consciousness was raised by the act of standing for the working class, seeing that oppression emanated from the state, and not individual men. And how traumatised we we're looking back by the backlash from the state and the strike breakers, the shizms in communities at that time

Which is a history worth telling. Doesn't make it a fight that had aims that were good for women as a sex class (and yes, the idea of women as a sex class was around in the 80s - it's the framing of feminism that I grew up with). I didn't see the schisms you talk about in the 70s. I grew up in an area with a strong women's movement that provided camaraderie and support and didn't seem to have fallen apart. I presumably missed that part and benefited (as we all do) from the women who came before me rebuilding.

We as women have to learn from the history of feminism, to join a thread to pretty much pillory miners wives is beyond tragic, we need to form unity around current issues for all women, not get in fissty cuffs about our experiences and allegiances.

I haven't joined the thread to pillory miners' wives. I've joined because I'm interested in the history, it ran parallel to and intersected with my own life, it had an impact on me and I have my experience, as a girl growing up in those times, to add to that.

Such an interesting thread. Thanks OP! I will come back and get lost in the links.

It's weird for me, I was quite young at the time and I think it was my first real introduction to the RL concept of relative truths. We're a family of Union/mill and mine/Labour ancestors. I still remember my gentle, sweet grandfather screaming at the TV about Thatcher. But my parents moved and I lived in South London at the time, with a best friend whose dad was a police officer. Nice bloke, helped me out of a few nasty scrapes.

Our truth was one thing. My friend's truth was quite another.

And again you imply that women only acted at the instigation of the miners rather than from a position that, irrespective of any power balance in a marriage / family, women valued their community and didn't want it destroyed.

On this articular point, if the women in mining communities had taken a feminist approach instead of centering men and trying to keep the status quo, they may have actually found ways to save their communities. Most likely not, because the sustained attack on working class lives was not just aimed at shutting down mines and sexism was not limited to labour unions. But they were strong and resourceful with incredible stamina so who knows. The women at Greenham Common had a fairly big impact on the country by taking a very different and women centered approach, though they didn't achieve their aim of nuclear disarmament, they changed the national and international dialogue about nuclear arms and helped build public opinion against the nuclear proliferation that the UK and US had been investing in. With the end of the cold war, it was a timely and effective movement.

I'm not saying that the women in mining communities should have done anything to advance women as a sex class. I've expressed understanding about why they would want to support the strike even though I see it as supporting a group of men who engaged in the oppression of women.

I'm saying that what they engaged in was not a feminist fight and them being women doesn't alter that.

when the labour movement uses the oppression of women, as the miners did, to shore up the position of working class men our loyalties can become split

Again you are denying women their autonomy and as said in various posts up thread support from Labour was virtually nil, so how was the labour movement using women.

And again you imply that women only acted at the instigation of the miners rather than from a position that, irrespective of any power balance in a marriage / family, women valued their community and didn't want it destroyed.

What do you think the women in mining communities should have done that would have advanced women as a sex class?