August 14, 2025 • 25 mins
Concluding part of our double episode about the crucial role played by women in the great miners’ strike in Britain, 1984-5, in conversation with Heather Wood, chair of the Easington women’s strike support group.
Our podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes, two exclusive podcast series – Fireside Chats and Radical Reads – as well as free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
Part 2 is about the formation of a national organisation and national protest, the media, the end of the strike, the effect on the women, and possibilities for the future.
These are re-edited and improved versions of our original episode 13. More information, sources, and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e108-women-in-the-miners-strike/
Acknowledgements
Our podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes, two exclusive podcast series – Fireside Chats and Radical Reads – as well as free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
Part 2 is about the formation of a national organisation and national protest, the media, the end of the strike, the effect on the women, and possibilities for the future.
These are re-edited and improved versions of our original episode 13. More information, sources, and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e108-women-in-the-miners-strike/
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando López Ojeda, Nick Williams and Old Norm.
- Episode graphic: Courtesy Heather Wood
- Music courtesy of the Easington Colliery Brass Band
- Speech recording courtesy of Amber Films and Can’t Beat it Alone. The full film in multiple parts can be seen at www.amber-online.com
- This version edited by Tyler Hill. Original editing by Jesse French.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, and welcome back to part two of our double
episode on women in the Minus Strike of nineteen eighty
four or five. If you haven't listened to part one yet,
I'd go back and listen to that first. As a reminder,
(00:21):
our podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters.
Our supporters found our work and in return get exclusive
early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes every month,
free and discounted merchandise and other content. So if you
can please join our community and help keep our collective
history of struggle alive. You can learn more and sign
up at patreon dot com slash working Class history link
(00:45):
in the show notes. As the strike progressed, many picket
lines became increasingly violent, including at Easington in the northeast
of England.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
At one point there was a police car turned over
and there were some windows put out at the yet
cogiery officers, but it wasn't anything on the lines of Augreave.
I mean, my god, Augreave was just horrendous.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
As a reminder, this is Heather Wood, chair of the
Easington Women's support group. Orgreave was a coching plant at
which there were extremely violent clashes between police and pickets,
which we're going to talk more about in our forthcoming
series with striking miners.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
After those cars had been turned over the way, people
were picked up on the streets and taken to court,
and even if it just happened to be passing them,
were arrested. I mean, I know one young lad who
had been taking his girlfriend home that picked him up
as somebody involved in that. He was taken to court
(01:50):
and the judge just said, I'm not listening to individual stories.
I'm treating all the same. You're going to prison. He
went to prison, and it happened was a relative of
mine and it was still as formally parents. While his
parents were on holiday. The governor of the prison rang
my mother and said, it's quite clear that this lad
(02:10):
shouldn't be here and if you are prepared to access
responsibility and make sure he gets back, and prepared to
release them to cities exams at college, and that happened.
Now that was the enemy withins or you know what
I mean. It's just incredible what the state could do.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
In July nineteen eighty four, Women's strike supporters organized a
conference at which they discussed establishing a national organization and
a national women's protest in London. This was established formerly
in August as Women Against Pit Closures WAPC. Amongst the
women who came together to support the strike, there were
conflicts around what the goals of WAPC should be, whether
(02:51):
they should be narrowly in support of the strike or
whether they should have wider goals related to things like
women's liberation in general. Also, many members of WAPC plainly
stated that they were not feminists, but especially as time
went on, many members came into contact with the feminist movement,
particularly through the Greenham Common Peace Camp. These tensions resulted
(03:12):
in a decision that one hundred percent of the WAPC
leadership would have to be women related to miners, such
as wives, mothers, sisters and so on, and that seventy
five percent of any member group also had to be
minor related women. This was in order to restrict the
focus of the group to the strike itself. So while
many women's groups did join the national organization, a good
(03:35):
number of others didn't, like the Barnsley Miners Wives Action Group,
which remained independent. The women decided that their group should
be women only and that it would have a close
relationship with but would be autonomous from the National Union
of Mineworkers in UM. On the eleventh of August nineteen
eighty four, up to twenty five thousand women marched in
(03:56):
London in support of the striking miners. But as the
strike dragged on, the employers were able to get increasing
numbers of scabs back to work.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I'm proud to say that an Ease and Currant, we
had the least scams, we had the least go back
to work before the official day of return, and I
can't remember the numbers brough with hand for rather than
a lot as the government would have you know that
the returning to work in droves before the vote, there
certainly weren't here.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Many mining communities are still divided today along lines of
who scabbed and who didn't.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
For me and for a lot of other people, it's
still the same when you talk about certain people, you're
always in the conversation with, well, you know he was
a scab. There's a photograph taken by Keith Patterson inside
of the clergy club when the meals are being served
and one of the women who is has that plate
in the hand getting a meal. Her husband went back
(04:52):
to work and I remember still the press he was
going back to work because they received no help from
anybody unless she was in the clergy club get the
meal and our children were getting meals. Well, what were
the help did you want?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
You know? It was just a blatantly it was an
excuse for going back. But they'll not be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
No, we might even speak now, might say hello, but
never be forgotten.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
In Nottinghamshire, where strikers were outnumbered by scabs, strikers had
a very difficult time and while the media frequently covered
tales of violence by strikers against scabs, they didn't cover
violence by scabs against strikers. On one occasion, for example,
when the car and garage of Peter and Janie Neelan
was set ablaze and their house vandalized. Itn rushed a
(05:40):
news crew to the home to report on it, but
when they learned that Peter was a striker and the
arsonists were scabs, they apparently packed up their equipment and
went home.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
We actually went to Olloton, Nothinghamshire, because nothing had very
few people who were on strike. Most scabbed and that's
where they from the breakaway union. But we knew that
the people in Alton who were on strike had very
little because they didn't have the support of the local
(06:11):
shops and everything that we had. So we actually got
a mini bus and took food down for them at
Oland and we stayed with them and it was just
so hard for them. I mean the year were worse
off than we were because the numbers were totally different.
There was more scabs going in than there were people
(06:33):
on strike, so it must have been really really hard
for them, and they were getting the treatment that the
scabs were saying that they were on the end of,
you know, people putting the windows in. That was the
Nottingham strikers had their windows put in, had their people threatened,
and like I said, Florence Anderson was arrested and Scargill
(06:57):
was arrested Betty Cook and they were in the Yorkshire
area then. But we were all doing very similar things,
working around the clock really seven days a week for
a year, because while you weren't making meals, you were
trying to organize, or you were trying to fundraise, or
you're trying to picket, or you were trying to write stories.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So you know, there was something all the time every
day as well as.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
The employers, the government and the police. The press was
almost unified against the strike.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yes, it was very much so.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Like I said, it was always something the pickets have
been smashed, this place up and in lots of cases
it wasn't true. And look at all grief. They discovered
how many years later that the film had been screened
the wrong way around. It actually was the.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Police going at the miners.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And yet now we're asking for an inquiry the government
to refuse in it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Indeed, the state broadcast of the BBC showed footage of
miners throwing missiles at police, followed by a violent police
charge against the miners. In reality, it later transpired that
the police attack happened first and miners responded by trying
to defend themselves by throwing objects.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's discussing we need justice the way they're trett us
and the press, the capitalist press, were against us. At
one point the mirror went in general, the mirror was
with us, but it was always the headlines the enemy within. Well,
I mean, at the end we got to be quite
proud that we were in But like I said, behind
(08:34):
the scenes, the journalists unions raised a lot of money
to help us. They were doing their job, and they
were throwing to their job. If we would all just
stick together, it would be wonderful, wouldn't all outstrike?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
But an all out strike was not forthcoming. We'll talk
more about that in our forthcoming miniseries. In addition to
the trade union movement as a whole, the Labor Party,
which was set up and funded by the unions, and
its leader Neil Kinner were criticized for failing to support
the strike.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Let us down.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
They let us down badly, very badly when you think.
I mentioned at the beginning of the interview that Neil
Kenneth came to our village just the year before the strike,
and he was all in support.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
His grandfather was a.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Miner and all this, and then all of a sudden
there was nothing. We were just left were the enemy within,
and the likes of Kinnec were frightened off because the
press all against us. And again I mean the reporters
weren't against us because we were getting loads of money
from their unions with the owners of the newspapers that
(09:41):
were against us. But Kinnick and his ilk slotted in
with that because they were frightened of their own future. No,
it wasn't about the strike, it was about their future.
They were looking after themselves, very much the same as.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
The Hour today.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
In November nineteen eighty four, many women members of Lesbians
and Gays Support the Mind as a queer minors support group,
split off from the organization to form Lesbians Against Pit Closures,
an explicitly lesbian women's group which joined Minus Picket Lions
and helped fundraising activities in support of the strike. You
can learn more about these groups in episodes twenty seven
(10:16):
to twenty nine of our podcast. As the winter of
nineteen eighty four to five continued, it became clear to
Heather and other strike supporters but most likely the government
was going to succeed in starving the miners.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Back to work.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
In all of our hearts of hearts, I think we knew,
I really do. We never talked about it out loud,
and certainly when I was talking to.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
The women, it was always we can still do it,
we can.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Still win, we can do it. And I remember one
year we've been to Middlesbrough to a rally and Hugh Binnan,
who was elected Joe Muni at that time and raised
a lot of money for us. He was there and
he isn't. Women were walking up ahead after the rally
and we'd just been sent and we can still do
(11:04):
we can. I think that was about the January we
can still do what we can do it And then
Hugh and I just looked at each other and both
had teas and our wives because we can knew we
weren't going to do it.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
But you have to have faith. You have to you
never know. It might have worked.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
But at the end of the day, I always say,
we didn't lose. Okay, we took our communities and everything,
but they didn't take our self respect because we stood
and we thought.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Eventually, in early March nineteen eighty five, just shy of
a year after the strike began, miners held meetings to
vote on ending the strike, which the majority ended up doing.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It was absolutely horrendous. I remember the day. I don't
remember the date, but I remember the day we had.
There was a big meeting in Easington Welfare Hall and
the hall was packed and spoke the lease jobs that spoke.
They were union officials and I've been asked to speak,
(12:05):
and I can picture it now. I had my speech
in my pocket, I'd written it and I went to
get the alphaby pocket and I put it back and.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I just spoke.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
It was just it was quite hard, and you're looking
around to say a Basis paid Blue four for a year,
and it's just sad. The felt defeated, and it took
a long time for people, and still some people haven't
realized we were braving what we did. We didn't win
(12:36):
the end game, but we were braving what we did.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
As the strike ended, Heather made a speech at a
rally in Easington, which features in the film Can't Beat
It Alone by Amber Films, to whom we're thankful for
sharing this contemporary recording with us.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Well, I think over the last twelve months, I've made
some speeches, but I think this is the most racking
one of the lot, because really I don't know what
to say to it all.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
I'm choked up because words can't say what I feel.
You've been the greatest people I think that could ever exist,
and I think people that this country, contrary to what
missus Thatcher says, we should be proud of, because I'm
certainly proud to be part of this community. I think
(13:27):
there's been a hell of a lot of suffering over
the last few months, last twelve months anyway. But what
we've got to remember is we've gained a lot from
that suffering all sections of our community. We've all come together.
We weren't like that before the strike. I know we
were to a certain extent, but we've never worked together
like we have the last twelve months. We've got to
(13:49):
continue it. Don't be downhearted, because I'm not. There was
a young lad asked me in the welfare hall just
as the strike was over. He said, Heather, you know
to get I think it was worth it what we've done,
and I've answered them sharp. You might have thought I
was a bit too sharp, but I certainly don't think
it's over. It won't be over until we get Margaret
(14:12):
Thatcher out, and until we win the case for Call,
and until we win a good working class society for
us all. And again, from the bottom of my heart,
all of you is thanks very much for Sean. What
good people are. I only wish the press had put it.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Over, while striking miners simply wouldn't have been able to
hold out as long as they did without the support
from their wives and women's support groups. The crucial role
played by women in the dispute hadn't received adequate recognition
until relatively recently.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I would say the last ten years people have started
to look at and to record more what the women
did and the worst women in that strike. I mean
every year since the strike, I've had at least two
students from universities all over the country who were doing
invitations on the.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Women's groups in the strike.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But in more recent years you've got a Maximum Peaks
just written a play about the women's support groups in
the strike. I think that's one in Manchester. Now you've
got Lucy Brownie's doing a piece for the Durham Book
Festival on me, my mother and my two grandmothers and
(15:28):
that it's about strong women in mine and communities and
that leading up to the strike. The is what I
was saying earlier. Women just over the years have just
got on the gone out twenty six did the soup
kitchens in twenty six, went back, came out, the wanted
bat in the suite, the protestors who went back, we
just did it. This time we're saying we would recognize
(15:50):
them in history. That needs to be there, what women
have done. And I don't know whether you saw the
work that the Women's Family Group did in Durham over this.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Last nine months.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
But it was a group formed to get a women's
banner ready for the Durham Big Meeting and we asked
women throughout the county to depict what they do in
patchwork and we put a patchwork banner together with the
(16:24):
help of Mary Turner who's a Durham quiza, and that
was paraded at Durham's Big meetant and it was blessed.
It's the first women's banner to be blessed in Durame
Cathedral on Big Meat and Day with the other banners,
and it's the first women's banner to be accepted into
the Durham Miners Banner Group. So all this is going on,
(16:46):
there's so much happening at the minute. People want to
know about women and the work that women have done
in our communities. It's amazing. So to me, I'll try
to talk to everybody because it needs to be recorded,
needs to be written down because otherwise the Tories, the capitalists,
they're right it their way and history will be changed.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Despite the loss of the strike itself, participation in it
changed the lives of many women, especially in mining communities.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I think the good thing, one of the good things
was that women recognized that politics was for them and
they could get involved and they did have a voice,
and they could organize and they could do things outside
the home or work.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That was the biggest thing.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
One of the biggest learning curve for all of us
was how the state can operate against you, what can
do the constraints that can put on you. The people
that can be locked up for no reason, learned us.
I think I learned a lot of women about capitalists
and haven't thought about it, and they hadn't thought how
politics are set did their lives. And I mean that
(18:02):
went for some men as well, because I can remember
saying to one man, have you looked at the political aspects?
And he said, oh, politics, I'm not involved in politics.
And I said, do you see that time to be?
He said, yeah, what as the tax that's on that
that goes to government, so that time to be it
is political. You are coming in a political act.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So it was opening people's eyes. So I think that
was one of the good things. I just hope we
don't forget it again because the one about the states,
because we were all surprised when the police landed in
asn't in the way.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
The day is.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
But we shouldn't have been because look at Peter Leo,
look at nineteen twenty six strike. You know the government
have always gone out against us, so we shouldn't have
been surprised. So it's important that things like this had done.
Recordings like this are made so that people do remember
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Large numbers of women involved in the strike continued to
be politically active afterwards in many ways, for example, in
the movement against apartheid in South Africa, in struggles against
further picitclosures in the nineteen nineties and more. Lots of
the women also decided to resume their formal education to
improve their own opportunities, going to collegies and universities. One
(19:22):
woman was quoted in Jill Miller's book You Can't Kill
the Spirit Women in a Welsh mining Valley as saying
the following quote, The strike was worth millions to me.
Our women's group will continue to flourish, it will go on.
We suddenly found out that there was life after marriage.
We've taken a political step forward in a year and
(19:42):
formed friendships that most women would take a lifetime to achieve,
and we don't intend to go back into the background.
Our husbands don't want us to either, even though some
of them have been heard to cry, please give us
back our wives. We have made a mark in this town.
We've made a space for ourselves in this world, and
we fully intend to keep it. As a matter of fact,
(20:03):
we're going to try and make an even bigger space
or go down trying end quote. Looking back. One incident
of solidarity, which occurred during the strike in particular, stuck
with Heather even decades later.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
One day when the first Easington scalp was gone back,
the Hall of Easington turned out and I'm moon the
Hall of Easington and the police were there and Jossy Smith,
who lived just near the pit, he'd just been in
hospital for a stomach operation and him and his wife
had heard the commotion at the top of the street
(20:37):
and they went up to see what was going on,
and before he even really got there.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
He was picked up by a policeman.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
There's photographic evidence of it, and he's been taken man
handled to a van by the police and his wife
is shouting, I want me ma'am, I want me, madam,
what you're doing to So the picked her up and
took her to the van, and the crowd erupted at that,
so that the police took Jossy and his wife back
(21:07):
home and told them if they came out again and
would definitely be arrested. So it's things like that but
stick in my mind, oh because not half an hour
later the police came back to Jossy and asked him
if he would go out and quiet in the crowd down,
you know, and these these are so amazing things that
it things can't happen in your village. You know, who
(21:29):
were JOSSI arrested like that? They rang me or somebody
around me that night and said can.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
You go down and see Jossy and his wife because
they're in such a space. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
The other family that we were called to go to,
their son was up and there was some rumpus about
it had a counterfeit fifty pound note. It turned out
it wasn't counterfeit, but but searched his parents' house, ran factors,
contacted his employer in London. He was a chef and
Rare did his flat in London and all known that
(22:01):
had seen the fifty pound note. It was okay, and
that's the lad. I had to get Jack Dormond to
go and get released from the PlayStation. I went down
to that lad's parents' house. The night had happened, and
his mother was sad, and she was riddled with arthritis.
And I always remember, I'm a very visual person, you know.
(22:23):
I remember hands who was sort of all crooked and
wizzened and with the arthritis, and she was only very thin,
and she was crying, and the house was lost. And
I said to the husband, did they have her a
first word? And he said no, How the brad asked them,
and they said, we can go and get one, but
it'll be worse when we come back. So they just
(22:45):
let them roundsack the house. And they didn't even tire
you up afterwards. And the lad had done nothing wrong.
So all those things stick forever.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
In your head.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
This small act of solidarity of the community was a
microcosm of what sort of things the working class can
achieve when we together, and how we could make the
world into a very different place.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Oh yes, if we all stick together, we could do it.
But we fall in the Tory trap and we fight
each other rather than fight the real enemy one day.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That's certainly been the case for the bulk of recent history.
But at the same time, there have always been people
like Heather, the Minus wives and the other women who
came together to support the strike. And while the repercussions
of the minor strike persist today, so does the fight
for a new kind of world.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I always say I'm a utopian socialist, but I do
hope we hear it.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
It's like I always said to.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
My children, am high and if you get halfway here.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
All right.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So that's it for this double episode. If you want
to learn more about struggles of Minus in Britain, check
out our episodes twenty seven to twenty nine about queer
support for the strike, and episode eight you about the
strikes in nineteen seventy two and seventy four. We're only
able to make these podcasts because of support from you,
our listeners, So if you value our work, please do
think about joining us at patreon dot com slash word
(24:12):
class history link in the show notes. In return for
your support, you get early access to content, You get
add free episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, two exclusive podcast series
called Radical Reads and Fireside chats. You also get discounted
merch and more. If you can't spare the cash right now,
don't worry about it, but do please tell your friends
(24:34):
about this podcast and give us a five star review
on your favorite podcast app. To our existing Patreon supporters,
thank you for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to
Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopezo Hada, Nick Williams and Old Norm.
Music in these episodes is Curtsy of the Easington Colliery Band.
Thanks to Amber Films for the audio clip. Learn more
(24:54):
about both of these on the links in the show notes.
This updated episode was edited by Tyler Hill with original
editing by Jesse French. Thanks for listening and catch you
next time.
Hi, and welcome back to part two of our double
episode on women in the Minus Strike of nineteen eighty
four or five. If you haven't listened to part one yet,
I'd go back and listen to that first. As a reminder,
(00:21):
our podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters.
Our supporters found our work and in return get exclusive
early access to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes every month,
free and discounted merchandise and other content. So if you
can please join our community and help keep our collective
history of struggle alive. You can learn more and sign
up at patreon dot com slash working Class history link
(00:45):
in the show notes. As the strike progressed, many picket
lines became increasingly violent, including at Easington in the northeast
of England.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
At one point there was a police car turned over
and there were some windows put out at the yet
cogiery officers, but it wasn't anything on the lines of Augreave.
I mean, my god, Augreave was just horrendous.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
As a reminder, this is Heather Wood, chair of the
Easington Women's support group. Orgreave was a coching plant at
which there were extremely violent clashes between police and pickets,
which we're going to talk more about in our forthcoming
series with striking miners.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
After those cars had been turned over the way, people
were picked up on the streets and taken to court,
and even if it just happened to be passing them,
were arrested. I mean, I know one young lad who
had been taking his girlfriend home that picked him up
as somebody involved in that. He was taken to court
(01:50):
and the judge just said, I'm not listening to individual stories.
I'm treating all the same. You're going to prison. He
went to prison, and it happened was a relative of
mine and it was still as formally parents. While his
parents were on holiday. The governor of the prison rang
my mother and said, it's quite clear that this lad
(02:10):
shouldn't be here and if you are prepared to access
responsibility and make sure he gets back, and prepared to
release them to cities exams at college, and that happened.
Now that was the enemy withins or you know what
I mean. It's just incredible what the state could do.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
In July nineteen eighty four, Women's strike supporters organized a
conference at which they discussed establishing a national organization and
a national women's protest in London. This was established formerly
in August as Women Against Pit Closures WAPC. Amongst the
women who came together to support the strike, there were
conflicts around what the goals of WAPC should be, whether
(02:51):
they should be narrowly in support of the strike or
whether they should have wider goals related to things like
women's liberation in general. Also, many members of WAPC plainly
stated that they were not feminists, but especially as time
went on, many members came into contact with the feminist movement,
particularly through the Greenham Common Peace Camp. These tensions resulted
(03:12):
in a decision that one hundred percent of the WAPC
leadership would have to be women related to miners, such
as wives, mothers, sisters and so on, and that seventy
five percent of any member group also had to be
minor related women. This was in order to restrict the
focus of the group to the strike itself. So while
many women's groups did join the national organization, a good
(03:35):
number of others didn't, like the Barnsley Miners Wives Action Group,
which remained independent. The women decided that their group should
be women only and that it would have a close
relationship with but would be autonomous from the National Union
of Mineworkers in UM. On the eleventh of August nineteen
eighty four, up to twenty five thousand women marched in
(03:56):
London in support of the striking miners. But as the
strike dragged on, the employers were able to get increasing
numbers of scabs back to work.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I'm proud to say that an Ease and Currant, we
had the least scams, we had the least go back
to work before the official day of return, and I
can't remember the numbers brough with hand for rather than
a lot as the government would have you know that
the returning to work in droves before the vote, there
certainly weren't here.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Many mining communities are still divided today along lines of
who scabbed and who didn't.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
For me and for a lot of other people, it's
still the same when you talk about certain people, you're
always in the conversation with, well, you know he was
a scab. There's a photograph taken by Keith Patterson inside
of the clergy club when the meals are being served
and one of the women who is has that plate
in the hand getting a meal. Her husband went back
(04:52):
to work and I remember still the press he was
going back to work because they received no help from
anybody unless she was in the clergy club get the
meal and our children were getting meals. Well, what were
the help did you want?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
You know? It was just a blatantly it was an
excuse for going back. But they'll not be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
No, we might even speak now, might say hello, but
never be forgotten.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
In Nottinghamshire, where strikers were outnumbered by scabs, strikers had
a very difficult time and while the media frequently covered
tales of violence by strikers against scabs, they didn't cover
violence by scabs against strikers. On one occasion, for example,
when the car and garage of Peter and Janie Neelan
was set ablaze and their house vandalized. Itn rushed a
(05:40):
news crew to the home to report on it, but
when they learned that Peter was a striker and the
arsonists were scabs, they apparently packed up their equipment and
went home.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
We actually went to Olloton, Nothinghamshire, because nothing had very
few people who were on strike. Most scabbed and that's
where they from the breakaway union. But we knew that
the people in Alton who were on strike had very
little because they didn't have the support of the local
(06:11):
shops and everything that we had. So we actually got
a mini bus and took food down for them at
Oland and we stayed with them and it was just
so hard for them. I mean the year were worse
off than we were because the numbers were totally different.
There was more scabs going in than there were people
(06:33):
on strike, so it must have been really really hard
for them, and they were getting the treatment that the
scabs were saying that they were on the end of,
you know, people putting the windows in. That was the
Nottingham strikers had their windows put in, had their people threatened,
and like I said, Florence Anderson was arrested and Scargill
(06:57):
was arrested Betty Cook and they were in the Yorkshire
area then. But we were all doing very similar things,
working around the clock really seven days a week for
a year, because while you weren't making meals, you were
trying to organize, or you were trying to fundraise, or
you're trying to picket, or you were trying to write stories.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So you know, there was something all the time every
day as well as.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
The employers, the government and the police. The press was
almost unified against the strike.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yes, it was very much so.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Like I said, it was always something the pickets have
been smashed, this place up and in lots of cases
it wasn't true. And look at all grief. They discovered
how many years later that the film had been screened
the wrong way around. It actually was the.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Police going at the miners.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And yet now we're asking for an inquiry the government
to refuse in it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Indeed, the state broadcast of the BBC showed footage of
miners throwing missiles at police, followed by a violent police
charge against the miners. In reality, it later transpired that
the police attack happened first and miners responded by trying
to defend themselves by throwing objects.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's discussing we need justice the way they're trett us
and the press, the capitalist press, were against us. At
one point the mirror went in general, the mirror was
with us, but it was always the headlines the enemy within. Well,
I mean, at the end we got to be quite
proud that we were in But like I said, behind
(08:34):
the scenes, the journalists unions raised a lot of money
to help us. They were doing their job, and they
were throwing to their job. If we would all just
stick together, it would be wonderful, wouldn't all outstrike?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
But an all out strike was not forthcoming. We'll talk
more about that in our forthcoming miniseries. In addition to
the trade union movement as a whole, the Labor Party,
which was set up and funded by the unions, and
its leader Neil Kinner were criticized for failing to support
the strike.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Let us down.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
They let us down badly, very badly when you think.
I mentioned at the beginning of the interview that Neil
Kenneth came to our village just the year before the strike,
and he was all in support.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
His grandfather was a.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Miner and all this, and then all of a sudden
there was nothing. We were just left were the enemy within,
and the likes of Kinnec were frightened off because the
press all against us. And again I mean the reporters
weren't against us because we were getting loads of money
from their unions with the owners of the newspapers that
(09:41):
were against us. But Kinnick and his ilk slotted in
with that because they were frightened of their own future. No,
it wasn't about the strike, it was about their future.
They were looking after themselves, very much the same as.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
The Hour today.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
In November nineteen eighty four, many women members of Lesbians
and Gays Support the Mind as a queer minors support group,
split off from the organization to form Lesbians Against Pit Closures,
an explicitly lesbian women's group which joined Minus Picket Lions
and helped fundraising activities in support of the strike. You
can learn more about these groups in episodes twenty seven
(10:16):
to twenty nine of our podcast. As the winter of
nineteen eighty four to five continued, it became clear to
Heather and other strike supporters but most likely the government
was going to succeed in starving the miners.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Back to work.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
In all of our hearts of hearts, I think we knew,
I really do. We never talked about it out loud,
and certainly when I was talking to.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
The women, it was always we can still do it,
we can.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Still win, we can do it. And I remember one
year we've been to Middlesbrough to a rally and Hugh Binnan,
who was elected Joe Muni at that time and raised
a lot of money for us. He was there and
he isn't. Women were walking up ahead after the rally
and we'd just been sent and we can still do
(11:04):
we can. I think that was about the January we
can still do what we can do it And then
Hugh and I just looked at each other and both
had teas and our wives because we can knew we
weren't going to do it.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
But you have to have faith. You have to you
never know. It might have worked.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
But at the end of the day, I always say,
we didn't lose. Okay, we took our communities and everything,
but they didn't take our self respect because we stood
and we thought.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Eventually, in early March nineteen eighty five, just shy of
a year after the strike began, miners held meetings to
vote on ending the strike, which the majority ended up doing.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It was absolutely horrendous. I remember the day. I don't
remember the date, but I remember the day we had.
There was a big meeting in Easington Welfare Hall and
the hall was packed and spoke the lease jobs that spoke.
They were union officials and I've been asked to speak,
(12:05):
and I can picture it now. I had my speech
in my pocket, I'd written it and I went to
get the alphaby pocket and I put it back and.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
I just spoke.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
It was just it was quite hard, and you're looking
around to say a Basis paid Blue four for a year,
and it's just sad. The felt defeated, and it took
a long time for people, and still some people haven't
realized we were braving what we did. We didn't win
(12:36):
the end game, but we were braving what we did.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
As the strike ended, Heather made a speech at a
rally in Easington, which features in the film Can't Beat
It Alone by Amber Films, to whom we're thankful for
sharing this contemporary recording with us.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Well, I think over the last twelve months, I've made
some speeches, but I think this is the most racking
one of the lot, because really I don't know what
to say to it all.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
I'm choked up because words can't say what I feel.
You've been the greatest people I think that could ever exist,
and I think people that this country, contrary to what
missus Thatcher says, we should be proud of, because I'm
certainly proud to be part of this community. I think
(13:27):
there's been a hell of a lot of suffering over
the last few months, last twelve months anyway. But what
we've got to remember is we've gained a lot from
that suffering all sections of our community. We've all come together.
We weren't like that before the strike. I know we
were to a certain extent, but we've never worked together
like we have the last twelve months. We've got to
(13:49):
continue it. Don't be downhearted, because I'm not. There was
a young lad asked me in the welfare hall just
as the strike was over. He said, Heather, you know
to get I think it was worth it what we've done,
and I've answered them sharp. You might have thought I
was a bit too sharp, but I certainly don't think
it's over. It won't be over until we get Margaret
(14:12):
Thatcher out, and until we win the case for Call,
and until we win a good working class society for
us all. And again, from the bottom of my heart,
all of you is thanks very much for Sean. What
good people are. I only wish the press had put it.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Over, while striking miners simply wouldn't have been able to
hold out as long as they did without the support
from their wives and women's support groups. The crucial role
played by women in the dispute hadn't received adequate recognition
until relatively recently.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I would say the last ten years people have started
to look at and to record more what the women
did and the worst women in that strike. I mean
every year since the strike, I've had at least two
students from universities all over the country who were doing
invitations on the.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Women's groups in the strike.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But in more recent years you've got a Maximum Peaks
just written a play about the women's support groups in
the strike. I think that's one in Manchester. Now you've
got Lucy Brownie's doing a piece for the Durham Book
Festival on me, my mother and my two grandmothers and
(15:28):
that it's about strong women in mine and communities and
that leading up to the strike. The is what I
was saying earlier. Women just over the years have just
got on the gone out twenty six did the soup
kitchens in twenty six, went back, came out, the wanted
bat in the suite, the protestors who went back, we
just did it. This time we're saying we would recognize
(15:50):
them in history. That needs to be there, what women
have done. And I don't know whether you saw the
work that the Women's Family Group did in Durham over this.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Last nine months.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
But it was a group formed to get a women's
banner ready for the Durham Big Meeting and we asked
women throughout the county to depict what they do in
patchwork and we put a patchwork banner together with the
(16:24):
help of Mary Turner who's a Durham quiza, and that
was paraded at Durham's Big meetant and it was blessed.
It's the first women's banner to be blessed in Durame
Cathedral on Big Meat and Day with the other banners,
and it's the first women's banner to be accepted into
the Durham Miners Banner Group. So all this is going on,
(16:46):
there's so much happening at the minute. People want to
know about women and the work that women have done
in our communities. It's amazing. So to me, I'll try
to talk to everybody because it needs to be recorded,
needs to be written down because otherwise the Tories, the capitalists,
they're right it their way and history will be changed.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Despite the loss of the strike itself, participation in it
changed the lives of many women, especially in mining communities.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I think the good thing, one of the good things
was that women recognized that politics was for them and
they could get involved and they did have a voice,
and they could organize and they could do things outside
the home or work.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That was the biggest thing.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
One of the biggest learning curve for all of us
was how the state can operate against you, what can
do the constraints that can put on you. The people
that can be locked up for no reason, learned us.
I think I learned a lot of women about capitalists
and haven't thought about it, and they hadn't thought how
politics are set did their lives. And I mean that
(18:02):
went for some men as well, because I can remember
saying to one man, have you looked at the political aspects?
And he said, oh, politics, I'm not involved in politics.
And I said, do you see that time to be?
He said, yeah, what as the tax that's on that
that goes to government, so that time to be it
is political. You are coming in a political act.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So it was opening people's eyes. So I think that
was one of the good things. I just hope we
don't forget it again because the one about the states,
because we were all surprised when the police landed in
asn't in the way.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
The day is.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
But we shouldn't have been because look at Peter Leo,
look at nineteen twenty six strike. You know the government
have always gone out against us, so we shouldn't have
been surprised. So it's important that things like this had done.
Recordings like this are made so that people do remember
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Large numbers of women involved in the strike continued to
be politically active afterwards in many ways, for example, in
the movement against apartheid in South Africa, in struggles against
further picitclosures in the nineteen nineties and more. Lots of
the women also decided to resume their formal education to
improve their own opportunities, going to collegies and universities. One
(19:22):
woman was quoted in Jill Miller's book You Can't Kill
the Spirit Women in a Welsh mining Valley as saying
the following quote, The strike was worth millions to me.
Our women's group will continue to flourish, it will go on.
We suddenly found out that there was life after marriage.
We've taken a political step forward in a year and
(19:42):
formed friendships that most women would take a lifetime to achieve,
and we don't intend to go back into the background.
Our husbands don't want us to either, even though some
of them have been heard to cry, please give us
back our wives. We have made a mark in this town.
We've made a space for ourselves in this world, and
we fully intend to keep it. As a matter of fact,
(20:03):
we're going to try and make an even bigger space
or go down trying end quote. Looking back. One incident
of solidarity, which occurred during the strike in particular, stuck
with Heather even decades later.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
One day when the first Easington scalp was gone back,
the Hall of Easington turned out and I'm moon the
Hall of Easington and the police were there and Jossy Smith,
who lived just near the pit, he'd just been in
hospital for a stomach operation and him and his wife
had heard the commotion at the top of the street
(20:37):
and they went up to see what was going on,
and before he even really got there.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
He was picked up by a policeman.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
There's photographic evidence of it, and he's been taken man
handled to a van by the police and his wife
is shouting, I want me ma'am, I want me, madam,
what you're doing to So the picked her up and
took her to the van, and the crowd erupted at that,
so that the police took Jossy and his wife back
(21:07):
home and told them if they came out again and
would definitely be arrested. So it's things like that but
stick in my mind, oh because not half an hour
later the police came back to Jossy and asked him
if he would go out and quiet in the crowd down,
you know, and these these are so amazing things that
it things can't happen in your village. You know, who
(21:29):
were JOSSI arrested like that? They rang me or somebody
around me that night and said can.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
You go down and see Jossy and his wife because
they're in such a space. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
The other family that we were called to go to,
their son was up and there was some rumpus about
it had a counterfeit fifty pound note. It turned out
it wasn't counterfeit, but but searched his parents' house, ran factors,
contacted his employer in London. He was a chef and
Rare did his flat in London and all known that
(22:01):
had seen the fifty pound note. It was okay, and
that's the lad. I had to get Jack Dormond to
go and get released from the PlayStation. I went down
to that lad's parents' house. The night had happened, and
his mother was sad, and she was riddled with arthritis.
And I always remember, I'm a very visual person, you know.
(22:23):
I remember hands who was sort of all crooked and
wizzened and with the arthritis, and she was only very thin,
and she was crying, and the house was lost. And
I said to the husband, did they have her a
first word? And he said no, How the brad asked them,
and they said, we can go and get one, but
it'll be worse when we come back. So they just
(22:45):
let them roundsack the house. And they didn't even tire
you up afterwards. And the lad had done nothing wrong.
So all those things stick forever.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
In your head.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
This small act of solidarity of the community was a
microcosm of what sort of things the working class can
achieve when we together, and how we could make the
world into a very different place.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Oh yes, if we all stick together, we could do it.
But we fall in the Tory trap and we fight
each other rather than fight the real enemy one day.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That's certainly been the case for the bulk of recent history.
But at the same time, there have always been people
like Heather, the Minus wives and the other women who
came together to support the strike. And while the repercussions
of the minor strike persist today, so does the fight
for a new kind of world.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I always say I'm a utopian socialist, but I do
hope we hear it.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
It's like I always said to.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
My children, am high and if you get halfway here.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
All right.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So that's it for this double episode. If you want
to learn more about struggles of Minus in Britain, check
out our episodes twenty seven to twenty nine about queer
support for the strike, and episode eight you about the
strikes in nineteen seventy two and seventy four. We're only
able to make these podcasts because of support from you,
our listeners, So if you value our work, please do
think about joining us at patreon dot com slash word
(24:12):
class history link in the show notes. In return for
your support, you get early access to content, You get
add free episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, two exclusive podcast series
called Radical Reads and Fireside chats. You also get discounted
merch and more. If you can't spare the cash right now,
don't worry about it, but do please tell your friends
(24:34):
about this podcast and give us a five star review
on your favorite podcast app. To our existing Patreon supporters,
thank you for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to
Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopezo Hada, Nick Williams and Old Norm.
Music in these episodes is Curtsy of the Easington Colliery Band.
Thanks to Amber Films for the audio clip. Learn more
(24:54):
about both of these on the links in the show notes.
This updated episode was edited by Tyler Hill with original
editing by Jesse French. Thanks for listening and catch you
next time.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.