4.3 Women's activities in the Miners' Strike 1985/85
4.3.1 The origins of women's participation
4.3.2 Women's activities and what they meant for them
4.3.2.3 Fund-raising and public speaking
4.3.2.4 Strength from Greenham
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"The scale of the miners' wives organisation and participation is unprecedented. 'In 1974 the strike was about money. It wasn't the end of the world if we didn't win. This one is much more important. We're fighting for ourselves, our children and our communities. ' It is in this that the women have subtly challenged the character, indeed purpose, of the strike." (J. Head: 13).
What made women's participation so special? What did women actually do in the strike? What motivated them? Which aims did they have and which consequences did their participation have for themselves? These and other questions will be looked into in this chapter.
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"Das neue "Phänomen" [the women's activities during the strike] gehört in die obersten Zeilen der Geschichte dieses Bergarbeiterstreiks. Ohne die Frauen wäre er nicht so lange durchzuhalten gewesen." (H. Dirkes / S. Engert: 19).
But why were women so committed to the miners' cause? The Miners' Strike 1984/85 was a fight for a number of basic rights: The right of work, the right to live in a community of one's choice, the right for a future for oneself and one's children. "These issues are not 'owned' merely by miners, they effect us all, and women in mining communities were quick to identify with them." (S. Taylor: 81). Only in some cases women had been organised before the strike and therefore it is amazing how quickly they took the initiative. Or maybe it was just because they were not organised: ". . . instead of wasting time passing resolutions calling on the leadership to do the things that will never materialise, people in the localities have, on the whole, just got on with it. This has not only been on a local basis but also nationally. "(D. Massey / H. Wainwright, 1985 a: 167). This 'just got on with it' (another keyword here is 'necessity') seems to characterise the beginning of a women's support movement especially well. As has already been said a strike of these dimensions is only possible if the organisation of daily life is done for the strikers who then can concentrate on the dispute. This is the starting point for women's involvement: "Necessity, not choice, drove them"(H. Rose: 328), very "direct and immediate needs"(L. Loach, 1985: 169) motivated them to become active - but not only to provide for their families but also "to defend their livelihoods and their communities" (L. Loach, 1985: 169).
It is certain that this women's movement did not originate in the established feminist movement which still was urban and mostly middle-class oriented: Too many of the women dissociated themselves from it - before and after the strike. It must be taken for granted, however, that women in mining communities knew of the ideas and positions of the women's liberation movement and were to some degree influenced by them - just as any other person. There were of course other influences, for example the women at the Greenham Common cruise missile base who had successfully and independently organised as women. But what was true for the feminist movement was true for Greenham as well: The women's attitude was sceptical if not disapproving.
The phrase 'people just got on with it' could lead to the false impression no further motivation had been necessary to activate the women. This was not always the case. Usually women needed 'a little push' to become active which often came from women who in some way or other had been active before the strike. In Easington this was Heather Wood, County Durham's youngest County Councillor. She organised the first Women's Support Group in the Easington District:
"And when the strike started - I mean, I felt a bit frustrated because my husband isn't a miner - then I thought: well, those people are goin' out and fightin' a fight for me - really, because they were fightin' the Tories - I should be able to do something and the only thing I thought was: organise the women because the men were already, partly, organised - very disorganised I think, but they had somewhere to go, they had a group to meet with." (H. Wood).
Later, when the women had already taken up support work, they sometimes needed to be pressed on as well:
"So I said 'Look! It's either you all take part or I'll just give up and we'll not be successful. ' And that was the point when they said 'Right, we'll go. We'll take it in turns. '" (H. Wood). Or: "Sometimes it's difficult, I mean, during the strike I can remember Tyne Tees asked round me and said 'Would Easington Women Support Group go into a television programme - Nightline - and would they speak about women's activities in the strike?' And I said 'Ah yes. They'll come. ' And I didn't tell them. I just said 'We've been invited to sit in the audience. '[. . . ] So when they got on the bus I said 'By the way, you're taking part in the programme. You have to speak, you know, and answer questions. '[. . . ] And they did it. And once they'd done it they went out and they did it again, you see" (H. Wood).
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"In view of the rationalisation of industry and the extension of women labour it is of particular importance to draw women workers into strikes. We have learned by experience that women workers and working men's wives play a very important role in strikes and lock-outs." (National Minority Movement: 218). This statement is not from the 1980s but was published in 1932 after the experiences of the 1926 General Strike and other strikes in Europe. These were to be the consequences: "During the strike women workers and working men's wives are to be drawn into active collaboration and entrusted with various functions in regard to agitation, organization and auxiliary service." (National Minority Movement: 218). Until 1984 these experiences had hardly been utilised. On the contrary. Margaret Thatcher's government trusted in women's restraint. "The gutter press heaped enormous praise on a tiny number of 'petticoat' pickets at Ollerton. They hoped that women's domestic isolation, lack of political experience and traditional involvement in the Labour movement would set them against the NUM." (The Red Miner, April 1985: 6).
The NUM did not try to draw women into the strike either. To support the miners the women had to rely entirely on their own initiative. Usually they began with the most obvious support work: The provision of the families with food.
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Heather Wood described how The Women's Support Groups began to work in the Easington District:
"I think it was in about the third week, the third week in the strike, we decided we would do that. We wrote out and within the next fortnight we had the main public meetin'. And the night after the public meetin' there was a man came with some food, so I got a group of women in Easington to say, 'Well, we'll start a kitchen tomorrow', and we sat with little, with big bags of sugar and split them up into little tiny bags, you know, and a box with cornflakes and split them up into about six different bags and so we served six families. And then the next week, when the man brought the food, we said, well , you know, it's no good just Easington not going hungry. We've gotta keep all the mines out and keep the strike strong. And so we phoned somebody in Murton that we'd made contact with and said 'Will you have the food this week to start your support group?' and it went on like that week after week until there were sixteen support groups in the same organisation." (H. Wood).
The first but most important step had been done: Setting up the soup kitchens (in Easington called 'The Cafe') had a number of very positive effects for the women.
Soup kitchens were unsuspicious:
The soup kitchens' primary function was to provide the miners' families with food. Women were not
deterred by feminist ideologies, political agitation or even by a male dominated organisation. At first women's work in the kitchens was simply an extension of their role as housewives.
Soup kitchens ended women's domestic isolation:
Organising the soup kitchens gave women the chance to meet other people. How important this was
in some cases is made clear by Heather Wood: "We had one woman in our support group that would actually never go out to the shops herself. Her husband had to do the shopping because she was
such a nervous person. She came to our support group, helped out, she's never been the same since. She'll go anywhere, talk to anybody" (H. Wood).
Women's isolation not only ended within the support group, they suddenly became the centre of community life. Heather Wood: ". . . our kitchen was the only meeting place that the mining families had." (H. Wood). Running a kitchen also made it necessary to organise the work. "It has meant going round local shops and businesses appealing for food, finding the premises and the equipment and collecting the finances to keep the canteens running." (M. Douglas: 11).
Women learned to organise:
Setting-up and running the soup kitchens were organisational masterpieces. With most primitive means, with little money and little support from the union hundreds of meals (in Easington about 500!
) had to be prepared and given out daily. Sometimes the women did not believe themselves that they could do it. A woman from Easington recorded her doubts in a diary. Heather Wood said: ". . . she's
got in her diary 'Our Heather', that's 'cause she's me cousin, 'Our Heather says we can start kitchens
to provide meals for the miners. I think she's crackers. We'll never do it. ' That was how the women felt, they never felt they could organise to do something, you know: 'Weak, little creatures like us, we
can't do something like that'." (H. Wood). But they did it very successfully for the families and for themselves. Once "they saw they could serve, provide meals, three, four, five hundred people a day,
they just said: 'Oh well, we can do this as well. We can progress. We can go on the next step all the way'. It was great to see, you know." (H. Wood).
Soup kitchens were predominantly female dominated:
In the Miners' Strike of 1984/85, quite unlike former national miners' strikes, the soup kitchens were
set up and run almost exclusively by women. This "did not require the difficult process of being accepted by and working within a ready-made male structure." (J. Coulter / et. al. : 216). Suddenly
the women had an organisation and a forum of their own in the male dominated communities.
Housework was brought into public view:
Though the soup kitchens in the beginning were a mere extension of women's role as housewives
they led the women to think about just this: "Bringing the servicing of individual men in the home out into the public arena has made women understand more clearly their own roles as housewives and
how women's lives are privatized" (J. Coulter / et. al. : 211).
The soup kitchens were women's first step out of insignificance. "Food distribution may be a traditional feminine task, but where women have organised it from the beginning it has given them the strength and aspiration to become involved in other aspects of the strike." (S. Jackson: 9). Especially younger women quickly turned to other activities, picketing for instance.
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Soon after the strike began women also went picketing, again to give practical support to the miners. Their interest had often been aroused in the soup kitchens: "Then they decided that, because of what was going on the picket line - they were hearing all, you know, stories from the men of what was was going on the picket line - and they wanted to see for themselves." (H. Wood). What women saw and experienced there had consequences for them:
Women met with violence:
One of the strike's main characteristics was the police violence. The "government is far better
prepared than ever in the past to face a major confrontation with key industrial workers. [. . . ] The will to repress totally was there. What was absent, even in 1972 and 1974, was the means to do so.
The new coordination and power of the police in confronting mass picketing and industrial disruption mark a profound historical change. [. . . ] Historically, every British administration since that of Lloyd
George has tried to operate on the basis of some form of consensus, reformist legislation and social peace. Even Neville Chamberlain was a wettish Tory at home. The Thatcher government, by contrast,
is openly committed to reversing long-held bipartisan social and economic policies." (K. Morgan: 284).
At first the police was reluctant to treat women as they treated men but they soon grew accustomed with women's presence on picket lines and no longer restrained themselves. Sexually abusive language, arrests, strip searches and physical force against women became the women pickets' everyday experience. Patricia Heron in the introduction to her diary: "I myself was a victim at the hands of the police on a women's picket line. I was pulled out the picket line and punched and thrown to the ground. I lost consciousness, when I came round there was policeman on top of me, a friend of mine tried to pull him of me she was thrown to the ground too." (P. Heron: 3). This was a completely new experience for the women. Unlike the men they had been brought up to be non -violent, to be weak and depend on men's strength "and indeed this is an important way of controlling women, both inside and outside the home: we must keep off the streets at night; we mustn't go out alone and so on. This threat is a way of confining women to the home and preventing us from carrying out an independent existence" (J. Coulter / et. al. : 207).
Violence on the picket lines helped women to see these problems.
The mass media:
For weeks and months the mass media published reports and pictures of violent miners and beaten police. They hardly showed what really went on on the picket lines or what the women experienced.
After the women's rally in Barnsley, for instance, "all we received from the media were shots of women kissing Arthur [Scargill]: They didn't show the hall packed solid with women singing and
chanting, women in action. It was too threatening, working class women getting organised, when we are brought up to be passive and think we have one role in life." (K. Mackay; quoted in V. Seddon,
1986 a: 55). This made the women angry but it also showed them how the media could distort reality. Women who had always believed the media became more doubtful about reports of the strike but
also about other topics, e. g. CND, the inner city riots, Ireland, and so on. They gradually developed a political awareness.
Women experienced sexism:
In some ways women on picket duty were treated like men. In other respects, however, they felt that their sex had an influence on the way they were treated. Sexually suggestive remarks from the police
became routine for the women: "All the women who picketed tell graphic stories of abuse by the police. In Hucknall [Nottinghamshire] women were told, 'If you need money for your kids, go on the
streets, you'd make good whores. You're all cows, all of you. '" (J. Witham: 64). The women were also discriminated against by the miners: "Miners going to work have exposed themselves in front of
the women and have not been arrested." (J. Witham: 64). Less spectacular but just as sexist was the miners' opinion of women going on picket duty. They often thought women should not do picket
duty at all. Women were helped sometimes by bail conditions which often forbade miners to picket again. The sexism of the strike sharpened women's sensitivity for sexism elsewhere in society and it
made contact with the feminist movement easier. It was only natural that women wanted to be treated as equals.
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The miners' bad financial situation during the strike - the state deducted £15 (later even £16) strike pay which the miners never got from their allowance - made it necessary to financially and materially support them. The support groups, especially the Women's Support Groups, made this their task - a task for which sufficient funds were necessary. Women quickly learned that a lot of public relations work had to be done. Usually they started collecting money, food, clothes or other things in their own villages but soon invitations came from sympathising groups from all over the country and from radio and television stations which not just wanted to materially support the miners but also wanted first-hand information about the situation in the mining-communities. This put new tasks to the women.
Public speaking:
"Frauen, die bisher kaum über ihre Dörfer herausgekommen waren, reisten im Land umher [. . . ], sprachen vor Massenversammlungen - auch im Ausland." (H. Dirkes / S. Engert: 24). It must have
been the necessity of this task which gave them enough courage to do so. "I didn't know what I were doing. [. . . ] I just stood up and said we were dead hungry and wanted all the support we could get. I
said we had a Centre set up and that we needed money and food. [. . . ] You know when I was speaking I was ever so nervous but after I finished I felt quite good, in fact I felt exhilarating. I was fair
pleased with myself." (L. Beaton: 97-98). After women had been quite afraid of speaking publicly they soon became more confident: "You know, I remember one woman, she - we asked her to speak at a
big rally in Middlesborough - and she's as quiet as a mouse, she was really terrified, and she got up and she, she only said four words. That was her speech. She said: 'I am a member of the NUM, me
and my husband have twelve pound a week to live on, we have two children. Please help us. ' That was all she said, but it was sincere what she said and it was the truth and, I mean, she got a
standing ovation. People could tell she'd never spoken before. She was on radio, the lot. Now, to her, she was a different person after that." (H. Wood).
Making contacts:
To raise funds women had to travel all over the country and even abroad. They met other people and groups and ended their isolation in the mining-communities. The women were supported and invited
by Labour Party groups, CND groups, unemployed people, lesbians, gays, the peace movement, or other women's organisations. These contacts brought new experiences - women learned about other
people's problems, their opinions, beliefs or lifestyles - and opened new horizons for the women who began to see clearly how their own situation was linked to the situation of the people they made
contact with. They also became interested in problems far more distant: nuclear arms, Ireland, Chile, South Africa, pollution, or the Third World. Shirley James from South Wales: "'Before the Strike I
never thought about CND or nuclear weapons. But now I have been to Greenham Common and we've had people from France and Japan staying with us. Before the strike I believed what the papers said
about the union and about the Greenham women. Things have changed. '" (G. Goodman: 91).
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Close co-operation and connections developed from the contacts with support groups outside the mining-communities. Women's Support Groups organised twinnings with cities or universities and planned joint activities like the 'Mines Not Missiles' marches from nuclear power stations to collieries. They supported each other in their fight against common enemies and for common aims.
Contacts with the women from Greenham Common were especially important. Greenham women did not support the miners' strike from the beginning: coal was seen as being unecological, working underground as inhuman and only when the Greenham women saw that the miners were being injured and arrested wrongfully by the police and that the communities suffered they began to support them. For the Greenham women contacts with the mining-communities meant they could spread their ideas and beliefs, but it meant that these - usually middle-class - women could extend their range of experience.
For the women in mining-communities the contacts with Greenham were even more important: On the one hand they gained practically from them. The Greenham women could draw on a large amount of experience as far as dealing with the police or the media, fund-raising, keeping out of the cold or surviving the lack of food were concerned.
Most important, however, was the confidence the Greenham women gave the miners' wives: these women had already run their camp at the Cruise Missile base for about three years and they still seemed to be in good spirits despite constant reprisals against them.
On the other hand women underwent a learning process which should prove invaluable to them: The nuclear threat became very real for them, they met feminists and realised "that they were not alone in their conflicts with men and they saw more clearly the problems of other women in organising politically and the wider aspects of women's oppression which link them together" (S. Miller: 361).
Ann Suddick from Durham about the newly made contacts and experiences: "'This is the emergence of a new socialism. We've been working with lesbians and gays and black people. The Indians in the Midlands were powerful! It's the only way forward, this. '" (B. Campbell, 1986: 282). Even if the links should not prove lasting, "the memory of them will survive both in individual and collective memory, to be used again in future struggles." (H. Britten: 10).
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Women did not want to leave it to the individual to remember the strike and women's activities in the strike. They produced written records of their impressions of the strike and also of their feelings, their worries, fears, problems, and hopes. "The strike opened up a whole new theatre of self-expression" (R. Samuel, 1986 b: 29): poetry and prose, bulletins and newsletters, broadsheets and graffiti, comics and cartoons, stories, songs, and diaries were produced during and after the strike.
Write to share the crisis:
Heather Wood once told the women of the Easington Women's Support Group: "'When you're away
from the meeting, if you feel bad or you feel good, write down your feelings and bring them to the meetings on the Thursday'. "(H. Wood). Writing was meant to - and did - relieve the enormous
pressure which rested on the women and thus helped to keep up the morale. It also reaffirmed the women in their aims, encouraged them to go on with their work and gave them hope for victory: "The
public language of the strike was one of hope, encouragement and reassurance. People said what needed to be said. They refused to give voice to doubt, or to admit to signs of weakening." (R.
Samuel, 1986 b: 31). Writing also was and is a means of communication. Bulletins or newsletters, which were produced by a number of Women's Support Groups, "keep people in the group informed
and can be used to present the arguments for the strike" (Solidarity with the miners: 22). Like the meetings of the Women's Support Groups they could also bring individual women's problems into
public view or even offer solutions for these problems, spread ideas about sexism and feminism, and present arguments for women's equality.
Publications:
By far not all which was written during and after the strike was published or written to be published. Of those works which were published usually only a small number of copies was produced and often
they were available only locally or even through the authors. Yet the publication of their works gave the women self-confidence: it confirmed the importance of their problems and feelings and gave them
permanence as well. It also was a kind of pioneering work: women in mining communities had hardly ever published anything before!. In the North East of England a wide range of different publications
was produced by the women: there have been collections of poetry (e. g. R. Forbes / D. Smithson), broadsheets (e. g. The Girls From S. E. A. M. ), collections of stories and poems (e. g. The Last
Coals of Spring), records with some of the women's songs (e. g. Heroes; Which Side Are You On), even a play (M. Pine). Very important for the women themselves were those publications which
recorded the history of the strike and of the women's activities (e. g. S. Graham; G. Newton). The women did not share Bella Jolly's opinion that the women's movement would go down in history as
the labour movements' finest achievement, and rightly so: ". . . women on picket lines, women defying authority, women saying no is not a new phenomenon. It has always occured but - and this
may be the most significant 'but' known to the modern historical research - whilst those who have been the source of the oppression that women fought against also wrote the histories, formed
political parties, ruled nations of headed households, that fight could never be given recognition, let alone status." (WCCPL: 25). The experiences of the 1984/85 miners' strike only confirmed this fact.
The work of the Women's Support Groups was almost completely ignored outside the left press. And "even socialist journals have described women's role in terms of the 'community' response in mining
areas - women as part of the 'wives and family' category." (J. Grayson: 4). Therefore the women took writing the history of the strike and of their own activities in hand, mainly 'For the Children'. Pat
Heron: ". . . you will be reading about the 1984-85 N. U. M. Stike in your history books in school. You will not however read all the facts, and what realy happend. [. . . ] It is for this reason I have kept
a diary so you will be able to show your children what realy did happen." (P. Heron: 1; see appendix). For the women writing their own history appeared to be the only chance of their work being
recorded and documented and not to be neglected in "the mighty volumes of formal miners' histories." (D. Douglass, 1981: 67). And for this it was "an important step in consolidating what has been
learnt." (D. Massey / H. Wainwright, 1985 b: 8-9).
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Part of the support work of the Women's Support Groups was to meet regularly. But apart from talking business, the meetings often were "a forum for discussing each other's problems, for sharing fears and hopes" (WCCPL: 47). They also served as a kind of outlet for the women: "We were at the kitchens,[. . . ] out fund-raising, attending meetings and rallies, so they more or less lived together. So obviously tempers were strained and there used to be arguments and that. I remember saying: 'We cannot argue! We've got a fight here. So what we've gotta do is, at our meetings on a Thursday night, say what you feel in the meeting. Argue like mad if you want but once you go out of the meeting, we're friends, we're together. '"(H. Wood). Women learned to discuss and to argue politically. "The women exchange stories about the men's reaction to what they are doing." (L. Loach, 1984: 7). New topics like chauvinism, sexism, or the equality of women were talked about.
All in all the meetings of the Women's Support Groups like all the other activities helped the women "to find their own place in the political struggle, instead of hibernating, lonely and hungry at home." (B. Campbell, 1984 a: 10).
Very important for the women in mining-communities was the foundation of Women Against Pit Closure -groups which are nationally organised as National Women Against Pit Closures (NWAPC).
The aims of this organisation are
- to promote and develop education for working-class women
- to become active on issues which effect the mining communities (unemployment, health service, education, peace, nuclear power, etc. )
- to enhance the relationship between the organisation and the National Union of Mineworkers
- to support the miners in their struggle against pit closures.
National Women Against Pit Closures still exists and regularly produces newsletters (Coalfield Woman).
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Women who - up to the strike - saw themselves as nothing but housewives and mothers organised activities which could potentially alter their roles in their marriages, at home, in the community, and in society.
"For the women of the village action groups the strike was a huge learning process, a chance to exercise new skills, an introduction to public life. Wives and mothers stepped out of the kitchen to become organisers and entrepreneurs, almoners and welfare officers, clothiers and catering managers. The strike was a school of writing, a training in administration, an apprenticeship in political skills. It initiated them into the mysteries of committee work, it gave them the confidence to speak on public platforms; it opened up a whole range of male preserves." (R. Samuel, 1986 b: 29-30).
Women entered areas from which they traditionally had been excluded, but instead of working within men's organisations they founded their own, which fitted to their aims and tasks. Women's activities were not long restricted to "merely servicing those 'actively' involved" but they widened their fields of activity and "developed a political style whereby active involvement and positive education go hand-in -hand to develop and support each other. This process has led to a positive evaluation by miner's wives of their value as women." (S. Taylor: 80).
They often had to fight, however, against men's resistance: Suddenly the women dominated the community, they organised pickets (up to then a male domain in the mining communities) or the men had to do the housework while their wives were out organising. Thus women's activities represented a "challenge to the dominance of men in working class culture." (J. Coulter: 205).
In the public of the support group, the community, and the wider support movement the women realised how they were oppressed and exploited and so this women's movement became a struggle for their equality, became a real working-class women's movement and as it encouraged women outside the mining-communities it could have an influence on or even include those women who had not become active during the strike because "the women who were collectively active in supporting the miners' strike have been a minority of the women in the coalfields." (V. Seddon, 1986 b: 12).
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Much has been written about the similarities and the differences of this miners' strike with former strikes, especially with the miners' lock-out of 1926: Economic and political similarities, similarities in the course of the two disputes, similarities between Arthur Scargill and Arthur J. Cook or in the opposition from Nottinghamshire have been found. Differences in the position of coal in Britain's economy, in the solidarity of the labour movement and in other aspects were detected as well. Differences and similarities of women's involvement and activities are seldomly mentioned.
In 1984/85 it was not for the first time that women in mining-communities organised support for their menfolk and their communities. There had been soup kitchens before as well as conflicts between women and the police, but that was about all: "Auch damals [1974] hatten wir Frauen unsere eigenen Komitees. Die Suppenküchen sind traditionell üblich. Aber mehr wußten wir damals nicht anzufangen. Deswegen gab es nach dem Streik für die Komitees keine Perspektive, und wir lösten sie auf." (H. Dirkes / S. Engert: 27).
It was new, however, that women's involvement went far beyond the level of practical support: they organised as women, they stood up and fought for themselves. The women's support movement was the first real mass movement of working-class women in Britain. The fact that the women organised neither in a pre-existing structure, such as a trade union or a political party, nor that they were dominated by middle-class people like in 1926, was also a new feature of the Miners' Strike 1984/85. Also for the first time the women challenged their oppression in the male dominated mining communities publicly and on a large scale. Whether or not women's new position during the strike has had an effect on their role after the strike is a different question: too often in the past women had to go back to what they were before a revolution, a strike or a war.
