5. Conclusions
Heather Wood summarised the strike's effect on the women in mining-communities like this: "It was, I think the whole thing is, for women: confidence. You know, you could sum it up in one word: confidence. It gave, that's what it gave them. To me that was the most important thing. "(H. Wood). Women's activities and the roles they played in the Miners' Strike of 1984/85 gave confidence not only to those women who actively supported the strike but also to those who were not active during the strike. Those who were active - very very few indeed compared with the number of those who were not - often changed considerably. They see themselves quite different than before the strike, which became clear at a meeting at the Easington Miners' Welfare where the Vice-President of the NUM, Mick McGahey, "addressed an audience which contained a large number of women. He swept his arm across the front row and referred to the 'housewives in the County who understand the problems. ' The first question was asked by one of these women. She made the situation plain: `we no longer regard ourselves as "housewives"; we are soldiers in the struggle. '" (H. Beynon, 1984: 109). Not only were the traditional roles of women as housewives or mothers challenged on a large scale, the strike also changed women's lives and consciousness. "It has shown them their strengths and capabilities; it has extended their lives beyond the house where traditionally women were confined" (J. Coulter / et. al. : 214), it has made them - through struggle - political beings and has given them an identity which previously had been denied them (women in mining-communities have always been identified in relation to men and to the industry - as daughters, wives, mothers, or widows of miners!).
New ideas and "insights into the world have been gained" (J. Coulter / et. al. : 200), women built relationships with other women both within and outside the mining communities and they formed "the forefront of labour and trade union struggles in a mass movement of women throughout Britain" (S. Miller: 362) and, one may add, of a new kind of feminism - a feminism which "was real enough [. . . ], but it is not one which can be easily aligned to metropolitan versions of it, and it took place within an exceptionally strong system of family and kin solidarities. " (R. Samuel, 1986 b: 28-29).
The Women's Support Groups not only influenced the women who were active in the strike but also those who were not. To what extent this happened is very difficult to say. It is not a question, however, that the Support Groups created a new atmosphere in the mining-communities - an atmosphere of more equality and more respect for the women, of a higher sensitivity for sexism and chauvinism. One can not expect male dominance to have disappeared from the mining-communities altogether. The strike has, however, "changed irrevocably women's consciousness of themselves, challenged male working class culture and gender relations" (S. Miller: 363).
