Miners wives - then and now
Mineworkers had previously been renowned for its nude pin-ups on Page 3 of the Yorkshire Miner the union's regional journal). The women have been taunted by miners who tell them to go back to the kitchen sink The women often say
What we are doing as women in this 1984, and possibly 1985, miners' strike is making history. We are setting a pattern for the future for the involvement of women in political struggle which will show what a formidable force we can be....'
These were the closing words of Maureen Douglass of Barnsley Women
Against Pit Closures to the mass rally of 10,000 women from the mining communities which took place last May.
the power and dynamic of their actions. Mick McGahey, the miners' union vice president, has even gone so far as to say that if the women had supported the miners in this way during the 1926 general strike, there might have been a different outcome.
In fact, miners' wives were organised in 1926 but in a different way and with a different impact. The comparison is very enlightening.
Judith BAKER
In her book, Women and the Miners'
Lockout,
Marion
Phillips, the then editor of Labour Women, a Labour Party women's journal, records how miners' wives were involved in public rallies and demonstrations as well as organising food parcels and fund-raising. In July 1926, an
8,000 strong annual demonstration of
Labour women was turned over to the theme of the pit strike and miners' wives led the march through London.
The miners' wives were not organised in local and national groups as they are today, but the Labour Party women's sections and national committee worked closely with them. Marion Phillips records how she was approached by the
Miners Federation to set up a women's committee to organise fund-raising and liaise with miners' families.
This committee was later to help with fostering of miners' children when starvation began to set in and it also raised vast sums of money during the nine-month lockout.
The link between the miners' strike and women was made in a lengthy report to the 1926 Labour Women's conference.
Attention was drawn to the special suffering of women in the mining communities. A call was made for housewives to support the demand for the nationalisation of coal as this would help generate cheaper electricity and more labour-saving gadgets.
So, women have organised before, but in 1984, with the experience of the women's movement and the changes in the labour movement behind us, the miners' wives are achieving something new.
These women are not just supporting the miners' strike through organising food distribution, fund-raising and welfare rights advice - they are politically leading through taking their own initiatives, on the picket lines and in mass demonstrations.
The demonstration in London on August 11, the first national march in the city since the strike began, was a classic example of this.
International Viewpoint 1 October 1984
These women are indeed making 30,000 miners' wives rally on August 11 (DR)
Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, was safely ensconced in a villa in Switzerland when the 20-30,000 miners' wives marched through the streets of London, chanting 'We will win, we will win, we will win'. This time they were supported by Labour Party women and Arthur Scargill (the miners union president) and Tony Benn (the leader of the Labour Party's left wing) were bringing up the rear. The women presented a "cheque' of £49 million, on the way, to the government's Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). represented the amount which the DHSS has stolen from the miners and their families by deducting it from their social security payments. £15 per week for each family is made on that, at first, their own husbands were also aghast. 'But now, says Betty Heathfield, who is on the recently formed National Co-ordinating Committee, *it has created a fantastic understanding between the men and women. In a speech to a fringe meeting at the TUC (Trades Union Congress) conference, Betty Heathfield explained this further when she said, "The women's activity is a means of awakening and uniting the whole of the labour movement at the grassroots. Our activity has, I think, brought a lot of men into the strike. And when we win, it will be a victory for everyone. It will wipe out forever the image of the wife who's very willing to escort her husband across the picket line..?. She went on to explain that there was a women's picket every week in the Nottingham pits and how women's experience on the picket lines had changed their attitudes as well. New strength
In their new-found strength the miners' wives have also linked up with other women, not, as in the past, when Labour Party women were "helping out' in the 1926 strike, but through action and self organisation. In fact, many miners' wives were directly inspired by the example of the women at Greenham Common. Lorraine Bowler of the Barnsley group ex plained it this way: It's because of the women's movement that we got organised. Women are now much more militant and
Some of our women would call themselves feminists, some wouldn't. Many of our meetings are explicitly women only; after all, the men have their branch meetings.?.
It is clear that the self organisation of the women will have a lasting impact. These women will not, like their sisters before them, be left out of the history books. Betty Heathfield knows what she would like to see. No union or strike will ever be the same again. Now we need to get the wives of dockers, railway workers and lorry drivers involved....
got a national coordinating effort for the women underway now, bechanged a lot. They are saying that when the strike is over they will not disperse and we don't want them to, either. strike has been the quickest social and political education we could have gone through....Now we have become political
It would be a shame to let this go. It shows what can be done. Indeed it does. It shows that women themselves can make history by organising together. m
vited to come to Denmark. On this occassion, among other things, a shop stewards' conference has been scheduled, which is expected to be attended by more than a thousand shop stewards from the entire country.