Women’s liberation and the miners strike 40 years on

[Karensalright]

Local radio making a podcast, recorded today at my house with my striking miner husband. For the forty years on thing. Brought it all back to me. There was a song we working class women sang,

there were a few lines in it i thought you all might like. From we are women we are strong, a miners wives song

”we don’t need government approval for anything we do
we don’t need their permission to have a point of view
we don’t need anyone to tell us what to think or say
we have strength enough and wisdom of our own
to go our own way”

thats my outburst for today ….sob sob .

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.

@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 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.)

@IwantToRetire i agree re Greenham, met Helen John a couple of times by accident, staggering home from a club she was very nice.

Very hard to resist responding been trying very hard

Has anyone got/read the new book by Robert Gildea, “Backbone of the nation”

He is a modern historian at Oxford. It is a comprehensive coverage, end to end of the strike with hundreds of accounts. and is a really good read.

@IwantToRetire

been on mumsnet less than a year and have just realised that sometimes an annoying post becomes a scab i want to pick at.

an annoying post becomes a scab i want to pick at

Whatever can you mean?!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

@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.

@40yearsafterminersstrike Oo. Gonna get that

thanks

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.

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.

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!

@stomachameleon thanks for your post i love all these sharing of memories

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.

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)

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

@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).