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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Miners' strike campaigner Anne Scargill dies

4 replies

IwantToRetire · 12/04/2025 01:56

"I used to go to the meetings with my ex-husband [Mr Scargill] and I thought, 'oh, I couldn't stand up and speak like that'.

"And then we were getting letters from all over saying, 'come and speak here, come and speak there'.

"It changed a hell of a lot of women."

Ms Scargill said she believed then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher expected miners' wives to "make the men go back to work".

"She got a shock then, didn't she? She didn't realise we were fighting for our future," she said.

In the 2018 interview, Ms Scargill looked back on the first year of the strike with fondness, and said she did not regret "one minute" of what she had done.

"That Christmas was one of the best I've had in my life, because it were a community Christmas," she explained.

"I'm not saying it were easy - it were hard - but we thought, 'we'll show Thatcher. We're not giving in. We are women, we are strong, we are fighting for our rights'.'"

In her tribute to Ms Scargill, Ms Cook said: "I feel so alone when I go to different places where we normally would have been together."

The pair had been "arrested and locked up in the same cell, organised a picket line in India and narrowly missed being arrested fighting for the cotton workers", she said.

"We travelled the world together, and now you travel the heavenly skies. Love you, Anne."

Full article at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lzkxzx7qvo

Anne Scargill, the former wife of NUM leader Arthur Scargill, joins miners, union members and local people in a protest march from Knottingley Town Hall to the Miners Welfare Centre marking the end of deep coal mining in Britain on December 19, 2015 in...

Miners' strike activist and campaigner Anne Scargill dies

Ms Scargill, who co-founded Women Against Pit Closures, has died aged 83, a friend confirms.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lzkxzx7qvo

OP posts:
tava63 · 12/04/2025 02:06

What a woman, may she RIP.

Hairyesterdaygonetoday · 12/04/2025 09:04

Anne Scargill and the women with her were an inspiration. RIP.

IwantToRetire · 12/04/2025 20:06

Over and above the political issue what she, and others, showed was the power of female solidarity.

A true inspiration.

RIP Flowers

(Thought the BBC did quite well in terms of writing about her as someone with an identity and life totally separate from her former husband.)

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IwantToRetire · 17/04/2025 19:02

Interesting interview but upsetting that the questions are in a huge typeface and BOLD implying that the answer aren't as important.

Would hate to suggest that the male comrade conducting the interview is seen as more important that one of the women active in the Miner's Strike!

Still worth reading https://www.counterfire.org/article/remembering-anne-scargill-a-role-model-for-working-class-women/

Remembering Anne Scargill: ‘a role model for working-class women’ 

John Westmoreland talked about Anne Scargill to her friend and comrade Aggie Curry concerning their roles in Women Against Pit Closures  Aggie was at the demonstration to keep Goole Hospital open, and spoke of her role in the 1984-5 miners’ strike a...

https://www.counterfire.org/article/remembering-anne-scargill-a-role-model-for-working-class-women/

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