‘A woman’s place is on the miner’s picket lines!’

Women Against Pit Closures: the local, the national and the ideological.

‘This strike wasn’t just a war fought on the battlegrounds of the picket line, Parliament and public opinion. It was as much a battle in the homes and families of those fighting for their communities’.

This is how the radical theatre company Red Ladder introduce their current touring production ‘We’re Not Going Back’. The play is a musical comedy telling the story of three sisters living in a fictional South Yorkshire pit village during the 1984-5 miners’ strike, who are determined to set up their own branch of Women Against Pit Closures. The 2024 tour opened on the 8th of March, International Women’s Day and 40 years since the beginning of the strike. ‘We’re Not Going Back” shines a light on the resilience of Yorkshire’s working class communities, and particularly the women at the centre of them, during the most significant industrial battle of post-war Britain.

Within days of the miners’ strike being called on the 6th of March, 1984, localised support groups sprang up within mining communities — led almost exclusively by women (1). The initial purpose of these groups was to provide practical support to the striking miners and their families, mainly through setting up communal food kitchens and distributing food and hygiene parcels to those in need. This kind of support was no small task. In one community affected by the strike, Kellingley in North Yorkshire, the strike kitchen prepared around 400 meals a day — more during school holidays — with women working the kitchen in two shifts throughout the day (2). 

Swiftly, these localised support groups grew into a national movement named Women Against Pit Closures (NWAPC), with the first political rally of the organisation being held in Barnsley in May 1984 (3). Around 1000 people turned up for The Barnsley Womens’ Rally, with the event hosting 39 guest speakers, including NUM leader Arthur Scargill (4) .

Mr Arthur Scargill (right) and his then wife Anne (third left), at a national women's demonstration against pit closures in Barnsley. Credit: ITV Calendar

By July, a national coordinating committee had been established, with prominent miners' wife Betty Heathfield, socialist-feminist activist Jean McCrindle, and Anne Scargill, wife of the NUM leader, holding key organisational positions. By this point the movement had taken on a much more political role, with WAPC groups regularly taking action on picket lines. For many of the local miners' wives involved, picketing was their first entry into the political sphere, and many reported its transformative effect on both their world views and their lives at home. In one account, women of North Yorkshire’s WAPC groups reported the effect of their newfound political involvement on their marriages:

‘Eleven months of hardship have tested families to the limit. Not all the marriages have survived, but many are stronger and more equal than they were before’

‘The best thing that’s come out of this strike, is that there’s a lot of marriages that are working one hundred percent better now’

‘I’ve had a rough marriage. What I had to put up with. He used to knock hell out of me - he put me in hospital once or twice. I had to wait on him hand and foot… But since the strike’s been on, its all different. He cleans up now, washes up. I can go out, and when I come in he’ll make a cup of tea for me. I can go lie down for an hour. I couldn’t wish for a better husband, and that’s God’s truth’

(5)

Through a feminist lens, these accounts are heavily complex. The idea that these women found some form of domestic liberation through the respect they gained from their entry into the male-dominated sphere of politics is certainly an interesting one, however it is hard to read these accounts without being struck by their desperate sadness. The third account in particular, with its description of a domestically violent marriage becoming somehow bearable because of the wife’s involvement in the strike, is particularly tricky to paint as any kind of feminist success story. Here, any newfound respect the woman gained as a result of the strike appears precarious and conditional, the woman herself going on to detail ‘ill be sorry when the strikes over, if it’s only for us own marriage’ (6).

As well as changes in the home, other members of WAPC also reported on how the strike transformed their worldview, especially in regards to the legitimacy of the law and policing in Britain:

‘The British policemen are wonderful, and the British legal system is the fairest in the world. That’s what you probably believe, and thats what most of US believed, until we learnt from our own experience that the official version of events is not always right. Now we know that there’s something very seriously wrong with justice in this country, and we’re frightened not only for ourselves, but for the future of this country’ (7)

North Yorkshire Women Against Pit Closures. Strike 84-85 (8)

Many of the clashes between WAPC groups and the police often involved heavily gendered brutality, with women being targeted by officers for arrest due to their looks, endless provocations from officers calling them ‘tarts’ and ‘slags’ along with physical acts of violence (9).

However, as much as these accounts of ‘a new breed of women who are only as old as the strike’ coming into a political awakening through WAPC are certainly true for many, it cannot be said that this was the case for the movement as a whole (10). As Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Thomlinson note, ‘National Women Against Pit Closures was not an organisation that appeared spontaneously, but one that grew out of careful political planning and execution by women who were far from politically inexperienced’’ (11). It is true that on the national scale, Women Against Pit Closures was an ‘organisation of contradictions’; while its grassroots were in the local support groups led by wives of striking miners, its leadership consisted of experienced political activists, often existing Communist Party members, and its exact purpose on a national scale often remained unclear (12). As Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Thomlinson put it, ‘was [the NWAPC] simply to support the strike or a vehicle for a broader, transformative Socialist-feminist politics?’ (13).

Furthermore, Arthur Scargill’s ‘behind-the-scenes’ involvement in the running of the women’s group cannot go unnoted (14). For Scargill, the image of the NWAPC as working-class miners' wives who had become newly politicised by the events of the strike was valuable, and so too was ensuring Eurocommunist and Scargill-critical factions of the Communist Party could not seize control of the organisation (15). At the inaugural conference of the NWAPC in July 1984, it was agreed by Scargill, and an ‘inner circle’ of the NWAPC leadership, that at least 75% of delegates from local WAPC groups must be women with a direct relationship to miners (16) . This proved a controversial move among many WAPC supporters and members. In Barnsley, the decision split the WAPC into two separate groups, as formally prominent members no longer qualified to be delegates. Furthermore, populist moves by the NWAPC, such as a petition written to the Queen asking for her support, alienated left-wing anti-establishment members, who also began to resent the Yorkshire-centralisation of the movement and its relationship to the NUM (17).

It should be noted then, that the membership of NWAPC was in no way homogenous, and that the exact goal of the organisation itself was often blurred. In many ways, the complexity of the makeup of the NWAPC, and its lack of one united goal reflects a wider complexity that exists within many leftist movements, as members and leadership attempt to juggle the practical needs of working class struggles, with wider political and ideological goals (18). Perhaps the lack of further political activism amongst many women involved in the NWAPC after the strike was over potentially dampens some of the narrative that working-class miners wives underwent a kind of socialist-feminist awakening because of their involvement in the strike. Nevertheless, the immense efforts of local WAPC groups in ensuring their communities were fed, independently raising strike funds and attending pickets during the year-long strike is nothing to be dismissed. Stories of Yorkshires women and their crucial involvement in the 1984/5 miners strike need to be told. Redladder’s ‘Were Not Going Back’ is currently touring Yorkshire’s theatres, social clubs and parish halls in March 2024 - you can visit their website here to book your tickets.

Bibliography

(1) Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Tomlinson, 'National Women Against Pit Closures: gender, trade unionism and community activism in the miners’ strike, 1984–5', Contemporary British History, 2018, pp. 78-100

(2) North Yorkshire Women Against Pit Closures, 'Strike 1984-5', People's History of Yorkshire IX, 1985

(3) LSE LIbrary. “Women against Pit Closures.” LSE History, February 28, 2024. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2024/02/28/women-against-pit-closures-the-jean-mccrindle-archives/#:~:text=Women%20Against%20Pit%20Closures%20(WAPC.

(4) Libcom.org. “‘Women against Pit Closures’ 1984-5 | Libcom.org.” libcom.org, 2017. https://libcom.org/article/women-against-pit-closures-1984-5.

(5) North Yorkshire Women Against Pit Closures, 'Strike 1984-5', People's History of Yorkshire IX, 1985

(6-10) ibid.

(11-15) Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Tomlinson, 'National Women Against Pit Closures: gender, trade unionism and community activism in the miners’ strike, 1984–5', Contemporary British History, 2018, pp. 78-100

(16) ibcom.org. “‘Women against Pit Closures’ 1984-5 | Libcom.org.” libcom.org, 2017. https://libcom.org/article/women-against-pit-closures-1984-5.

(17-18) Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Tomlinson, 'National Women Against Pit Closures: gender, trade unionism and community activism in the miners’ strike, 1984–5', Contemporary British History, 2018, pp. 78-100