Miners' wives are on the march
Something important is happening among miners' wives in Britain today.
Never before in Britain has anything like this number of working class women mobilised, as wives, mothers, daughters, friends, to defend jobs
On May 12, ten thousand people marched in Barnsley, the seat of the national headquarters of the NUM, the miners union, at the call of the women, carrying banners from every mining area in Britain.
The arrest of Anne Scargill, whose husband Arthur is the president of the miners union, on the picket lines in Nottinghamshire was a graphic illustration of the extent to which the women are picketing and organ-
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BRITAINfor their community.
•Women Against Pit Closures' group.
-Two thirds of the marchers were
ARADI SAUDITA Таннено ising the strike with the men, as well as making sure of the food parcels tip the military balance by giving Iraq missiles that could put Kharg Island out of operation.
Furthermore, the Gulf war is one of the main points on the agenda at the imperialist London summit.
Most recently, the Iranian and Iraqi governments for the first time accepted a limitation of the hostilities under international control. They agreed to a truce on bombing civilian targets beginning June 12 under UN supervision.
In the context of all these maneuvers and pressures it is obviously dangerous to make any assumptions about what direct and indirect protagonists in the Gulf war will do now. But the basic terms of the conflict and the stakes remain clear.
The Iraqi people remain united behind Bagdad against what they see as an attempt to conquer their country. Arab nationalist sentiment is overwhelming against the Iranian invasion. The Iranian military operations are no longer a defensive war in any sense, but a political adventure. The fundamental course of the conflict has been to favor imperialist reinsertion in the area and a rightward development in Iran.
The tasks of socialists and anti-imperialists also remain clear. They are to oppose the continuation of this war and to oppose the imperialists' maneuvers to regain a foothold in the region. The opposition in the US congress to Reagan's moves to insinuate American military forces into the conflict, through increased support for the Saudis and escorting tankers in the reflect the pressure of antiwar ing in the United States and at the time the extent to which the imallist powers have become discredited as peace keeping forces.
Viewpoint 18 June 1984 and other support for the families. Janine INGLEFIELD
How and why did it all happen? It's the same answer. Kay Sutcliffe and her iriends in the Aylesham Ladies Section of the miners' welfare club (an auxiliary section for wives) were angered by a picture of a miner's wife in the Sun newspaper that showed her with a toy gun and quoted her as saying she wished she had a real gun to shoot NUM president Arthur Scargill with. While these women down in Kent, the southeast corner of England were getting angry, miners' wives Maureen Douglass and her friends in Barnsley and Doncaster up in the north, had just the same reaction to the picture. They were in fact interviewed on television and expressed their feelings.
Kay Sutcliffe saw the programme and she and her friends called a special meeting of the Ladies Section to discuss what they could do to support the strike. Kay suggested that they should carry the banner of the NUM lodge (branch) for the pit where their husbands worked and march through Nottingham. Nottinghamshire is the only NUM area not to have joined the strike. However, as the Kent NUM were assigned to picket the pits in Leicester that were still working it was decided that the demonstration should be held in Coalville, Leicestershire. Several hundred women came to this first demonstration at the end of March. The original plan had been to organise it like a women's peace march' with the women carrying the banners in a women only march. But in the end, as a number of other organisations had turned up and wanted to march, they decided to have the men marching too.
The example of this first demonstration spread like wildfire and other groups got organised and held their own demonstrations. This was not new, the wives and women from the mining communities had organised in the 1972 and 1974 strikes but as Kay Sutcliffe explained to Socialist Action 'In 1974 we were mainly concerned with food parcels. They came in from all over the country and we had to decide how they were distributed and who was the most needy. That will probably be needed again, as the strike is hard and creates need very quickly? (April 6, 1984).
This was a correct prediction. As the strikers gritted their teeth for battle the mining communities had to get organised It was touch and go at first, until the National Delegate Meeting in Sheffield on April 12, whether or not the strike would be called off because of the right wing's campaign for a national ballot. But after that meeting it was clear that the strike would be a long and bitter one. Food had to be collected, canteens run and money raised. Women's support groups sprang up in every pit village and women organised because of the necessity to keep their families fed and clothed.
But, while these groups were initially formed for practical reasons, many of them soon evolved into democratic women's organisations that mobilised and politicised women.
Many of the wives are in fact themselves workers. Some in the pit canteens or other jobs connected with the mines, but most elsewhere. Like many women in Britain today, rather than be driven out of the workforce by the recession, they have been willing to accept lower pay or shorter hours because their pay is essential to the families' well being. Some of the women in Kent have had to hitchhike to work because they do not have the money for fares, but it is vital that they get to work to earn money while the strike is on. This necessity is giving women a new sense of confidence as the providers for their families, a confidence that is spilling over into their political activity.
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The women's committees have been organising women to go and speak at support meetings up and down the conwomen's pickets and marches and joining the pickets along with the miners. most areas they have official representation on the strike committees. Annette, the vice chair of the Aylesham women's committee, is able to attend all the daily strike committee meetings as she does not go out to work, and has been invited to do so from the start. The women's committees are also organised in a democratic way. Although the Aylesham committee has elected officers to deal with the business', decisions are taken collectively among all the women who come to the meetings.
The dynamic role of women in this strike is based on two factors: place within their communities and the growing visibility of women in the political scene in Britain, particularly in the themselves forward because they see that the Greenham women had done far from simply being a 'brotherhood of men' have always includthe women in their traditions of
Today's miners' wives are redefining the terms of that involvement
This is why we saw such an exciting event in Barnsley on Saturday May 12. Women were not just organising with men to support the strike, they were organising as women. In Leicester, where a women's support group has only recently been set up, men were invited to the first meeting if they were prepared to look after the children!
Of course there are great variations in the level of consciousness and experience of the groups and individuals involved.
This tribute came from the man who vehemently defended the use of a Page 3 pin-up girl picture in the union paper
The miners' wives were jubilant, they had won an official approval for their picketing activities, and the arrest of Anne Scargill on the picket lines set the seal on that approval. Too powerful to ignore
In South Nottingham they say women are better pickets than men for three important reasons. Firstly, a lot of miners have already been arrested on the picket lines and have been released on bail on condition that they do not picket again. Secondly, the police find it harder to identify the miners' wives when they and down the motorway cafes to stop 'potential pickets', and it is harder for the police to appear to be the peace when they arrest women for simply standing and arguing scabs are more embarrassed to walk into work past women whom they know are struggling to feed and care for their
The hunger and suffering of the miners' families is deadly serious. Pat, a miner's wife who attended the Sheffield Women Against Pit Closures meeting, reported that she and her family had been receiving £3.50 a week since the beginning of the strike. Although the wives and families of strikers are entitled to social security benefits this is calculated on the basis that the miners are receiving £15 per week strike pay - which they are not. Rented televisions and videos have been sent back, summer holidays cancelled. Labour-run local councils in the mining districts have provided free school meals for the children of strikers, local shops and publicans have pledged not to put up prices during the strike, the Labour Party has asked every member to give at least 50p a week during the course of the strike. Food collections are made and distributed to miners. Some local Labour Parties have 'twinned' with local pits to make a special effort to provide this sort of help. But the burden of organising a fair distribution among the families and within the families falls on the women.
But the hardship the miners and their families are suffering is not going to make them give in. The self-organisation of women in this strike is a key symbol of the resistance to the 'starve them out' policies of the Tory government. •We'd rather eat grass than give in to Maggie Thatcher' is the spirit that dominates the mining communities, expressed by one of the Nottingham women at the Barnsley demonstration.
The women's energy and enthusiasm is unstoppable. Their groups are learning new ideas all the time. Direct links have been made with the women's peace movement, and the Labour Party women's organisation. A delegation of Kent miners' wives visited the Greenham Common women in their camp. Sheffield Women Against Pit Closures discussed tactics to use on the picket lines with the Sheffield Women for Disarmament group. In every struggle in Britain today women are coming to the fore. As Scargill put it, This movement is so powerful they just can't ignore it any longer. The women in our community are on the march.
Maureen
Douglass, speaking at the