The miners' wives and the fight for women's liberation
"Today when a miner speaks at a meeting it doesn't have the same impact as having a woman. People were at first taken aback. They expected us to talk only about women's involvement in a very passive way and not give political speeches. And when they heard us, the reactions was "What the hell is going on "' (1)
There are many factors which explain why the women are playing a much more key role in the strike today. Firstly,
'A woman's place is on the picket line', is the battle cry of the thousands of miners' wives in Britain who have so courageously fought the Thatcher government in the last eleven months in order to defend the mining communities. Whatever the outcome of the dispute, it is clear that it is these women, organised in their own groups in every striking pit village in the country who have held the strike together.
been counting on getting the women to play a typical
The women of the mining communities have shattered the Tory role.
image of the wife escorting her husband across the picket lines, the course of their struggle they have challenged many other traditional images of women.
Judith BAKER
Because of the tight knit communities in which the miners and their families live, the women have in fact played an active role in supporting previous strikes.
Even during the 1926 general strike, the
And women were organised in support.
in the 1972 and 1974 miners' strikes the women were organised, but as many point out now this was only to work in the kitchens or to help with the food
The Tory government hac strike-breaking and in
In this strike everything is very
As Tricia Suteliffe, a Kent miner's wife points out, In the 1972 and 1974 strikes we were doing the things women normally do - working in the kitchens, making food parcels.
on one picket in 1972, but that was a one-off thing
In 1972 we had joint demonstrations but organised by
NUM, not separate women's demos with coming along, speaking on platforms was unheard of.
ten years of the women's movement definitely had an impact on these women and on the way they organised. Most miners' wives groups whilst they do organise food and clothes distribution (a vital task in the dispute) also have a life of their own. They have their own. bank account and in some cases organise women only pickets. Many of the women declare themselves influenced by feminism and some would call themselves feminists.
Groups of miners' wives have been down to the Greenham Common peace camp during the strike and the Greenham women have actively supported the strike.
But apart from the impact of feminist ideas and the strength of women's exam-
All quotations from Kay and Tricia Sutcliffe are taken from an interview conducted in November 1984 by Jane Kelly. Unpublished.
Instead of being in the kitchen, the women are out on the picket line.....
The following are major extracts from a speech made during his last four years in utter torment because he wanted to by Kay Sutcliffe, leader of the Kent miners' wives to a go to work. This is the kind of thing we don't want to see -meeting organised by Socialist Action supporters in our young men suffering years and years of torment because Penrhiwceiber, South Wales, on February 16. they want to work, they want to keep this country alive. They do not want to sit on the dole queues for the rest of their
...this government is launching an attack not only on the lives. They are not idle men despite what they would have working class as a whole but on the mining communities. And you have to live in a mining community to understand why. We have seen many attacks against the miners and the minI have a particular personal link with Penrhiwceiber because my ing communities. Many tactics have been used by the coal father was born here and along with many other miners from board and the government; cuts in social security payments, the Wales but also from Scotland, Yorkshire and the Midlands press and the media have been used against us and during the 1930s these men were forced out of these coalfields to find work elsewhere. And our coalfield in Kent was a leader and I would like to add that he is one of the best leadformed from amongst these men who travelled many, many ers that any union has ever had. If the rest of the trade-union miles on foot in order to make a new future for themselves and movement had leaders like Arthur Scargill, we wouldn't be in their families. That is why we're fighting now to keep our communities together. Our forefathers have fought for this. These We've seen a back-to-work movement that hasn't been very communities are our right — we deserve to keep them and we successful despite the figures that the Coal Board puts out on will fight every step of the way to ensure that we do. We all know in our hearts that those men aren't
There is no point in saying that there are jobs elsewhere be- going back to work. They can play about with the figures as physically impossible. 14 us believe.
Scargill in particular.
this position now.
the television.
much as they like.
Arthur
He is not the NUM personally, he is just
What are those men doing?
They are not
International Viewpoint 11 March 1985
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Kay Sutcliffe speaks
was just fined one hundred pounds for an assault. When you the food and even the action they've taken.
consider these charges and see that these lads have been sentenced in the middle of an industrial dispute, they are in fact even from countries as far away as Australia and Nicaragua.
political prisoners and we ought to all take action to ensure that these people are all taken out of jail and let back into society We've got the next round of pay talks coming up with industrial action from teachers, railwaymen, council workers and
The police activity has been stepped up since the 1974 strike; particularly the rate capping on March 6.
they have been trained for what they are doing. use it together to fight together, to win for everyone, not just trained hard. And we all know who they've been trained on and the mining communities.
If we all stick together, we'll win for everyone. We've got to we've all stood back and watched it: the black people in this country, the gays and lesbians in this country, the Greenham see unity in the working class in order to get socialism....The
Common women and the people in Northern Ireland. miners deserve to win, the communities deserve to win. Let's
How long have we sat back and watched what has been done make sure that they do. Victory to the miners.
to these communities? How long have we sat back and never taken up any action for them? None of us have done very Bail conditions and sentences themselves during the strike have beer
But these people were out on the picket lines, out col- with many pickets being told that they must not go lecting for us, from day one. They have never turned their within one mile or a few miles of the place where they were arrested on ple in struggle, women's actual lives have also changed a lot in the last ten years and these changes have had a big impact on women in the mining communities. The main change is that more and more women are going out to work (and this despite Thatcher's drive to get them back
Davies of the Penrhiwceiber women's support group in South Wales described the impact that this has had to Socialist Action, a British revolutionary Marxist paper. 'Yes. More women work today in the mining communities than ever before. They got used to being independent. A lot have got part-time jobs mainly in factories or as school cleaners, working in the bakery or in the
We supported our husbands last time, just as much as now, but we didn't have as much freedom. women feel stronger minded today. Like the women at Greenham Common, who have shown that women can do things that men can do and even that men perhaps can't do — like survive all that hard-
Another thing that changed the women's attitudes and their involvement in the strike was the experience of police brutality early in the dispute. Many mining villages in Britain are now virtually permanently occupied by police. One could easily imagine that one was in Belfast or Derry rather than
Kay Sutcliffe (DR) Kent. Like the women of Northern Ireland, the women of the mining communities live with this every day, and it has hardened their attitudes.
On the picket lines, the women have learnt at first hand about police violence, and it is a lesson that most of them will not forget. To them, it has revealed the political role of the 'boys in blue" Kay Suteliffe of the Kent group described one morning's events:
"The police were just punching everybody. Six to eight people got arrested that day before the scabs came anywhere near the gate. Twenty-six people got arrested in all. We watched the police actually drag a bloke away who hadn't done anything. We can't go to our children and say, "If you're in trouble, go to the police. You can trust them." They children] call the police
Ten months ago I would have told them not to
As well as themselves being directly influenced by feminism and the women's movement, the miners' wives have also inspired other women. This is important because of the Thatcher government's attacks on women's rights, which had played a big role in dispersing and demoralising sections of the women's movement. Behind them the miners' wives have rallied women from the Labour Party, women from Greenham Common and from women's groups all over the country. Women against Pit Closure groups, established in all the major towns, comprise women from many sections of the broad women's liberation movement. The miners' wives are in the leadership of a vital recomposition of the women's movement which could prove very important in the coming years.
The women's action has also had a massive impact in the Labour movement and in particular on the miners' union itself. On August 11, 1984, the first national demonstration in support of the strike was organised by the miners wives in London. Arthur Scargill, the
We've had the police thrown against us right from the bebacks on us and we should be ashamed that we ever turned our ginning of this strike. Men in Kent have had their civil liberties taken away. They weren't allowed to go from Kent and up to
The tactic of the Tory government has always been divide
Many of the men in Kent have links the Yorkshire coalfield.
and rule, worker against worker.
with men in Leicester because that is where they did their first have a hard fight against the working class and they can't beat lot of picketing.
It's now that the TUC and the Labour Party should be
We have seen that because of petty restrictions on bail conthinking about what action they should take. We don't need ditions that have restricted movement on picketing line, the
Norman Willis to negotiate a settlement for the miners. We've roles in many communities have been reversed. (1) Instead of got a good executive that can do that for us. What we neec the women being looked at as working in the kitchens, the for Norman Willis and Neil Kinnock and others to do is to back women in many cases are now out on the picket lines and the us in the actions we've taken. The rank and file have done a lot men are in the kitchen, helping to feed the families.
in terms of picket lines and collections and we are very thank-
When we consider the police activity against us, the way
But these leaders are there to represent the workthey fiddle about with film clips to show that it's the miners ing class and it's about time they did their jobs. And if they that are causing the violence, we all know that it's the police were getting paid as working class men are, then perhaps they'd that are causing all the trouble.
We have got two Kent miners in jail for offences on the
The workers have produced the wealth of this country for picket lines: Terry French has been jailed for five years for an many years and it's about time they reaped the benefit.
assault on a police officer; Chris Tately has got three years in a
We've had a lot of international interest shown in this strug remand home for an assault on a police officer. Those sentengle as well. They're looking to us to win this strike not just for ces were imposed on these lads on the very same day that a the working class in Britain but for the working class throughpoliceman that had assaulted his wife and put her into hospital out the world. We'd like to thank them all for the money and where they belong
International Viewpoint 11 March 1985 backs on them.
us if we stick together.
ful for that.
fight a bit harder.
They've been pain of fines or rearrest.
They know that they will
From people in the Netherlands and the Soviet Union and
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R
miners' leader, and Tony
Benn
(the leader of the Labour Party's left wing)
were there along with other men, marching at the back!
It is no coincidence that the NUM delegate at the 1984 Labour Party conference spoke in favour of changes in the