North Staffs Miners Wives
Bridget Bell North Staffordshire Miners Wives Action Group
The strike was a year-long struggle in which a community was attacked on all fronts - not only in the way the state was acting at the picket line level. In Staffordshire women were on the picket line because the area was subject to a lot of scabs. So women were absolutely critical to the strike. We had to be on the picket line as well as building support at all the other levels. Throughout the whole of the strike women got involved with speaking tours, organising major events, collections and so on.
North Staffordshire Miners Wives Action Group was established then and is still going today - we’ve been involved in the Stop the War Coalition here in Barnsley, where I live now. Brenda in Stoke-on-Trent is involved in anti-fascist work because they have a BNP councillor there.
There is a line in the media that the strike politicised miners’ wives - I think this is very simplistic. Miners’ wives were political, by the very nature of the mining community. The difference with the strike was that women became politically active in a way that they hadn’t been before. The strike threw up the possibility of organisation that wouldn’t have been necessary before. The nature of the struggle meant that it crossed national boundaries and crossed struggles. All of us benefited from that. You got a cross-fertilisation of all sorts of struggles.
For me, what was wonderful about it was that it demonstrated that in a time of struggle we can come together - as the left, with all our different groupings and different campaigns. I was involved in a single-issue campaign - domestic violence and women’s refuges - but that didn’t mean that I thought politics was about single issues. I thought what I was doing was a priority. As soon as the strike came along, it was quite clear within that community, where you had to put your energies. That happened with all the different groups. We all came together and formed a united front, and that was what was so wonderful about it. We know that when there is a serious attempt to destroy our class we can all unite. I can’t think of anything more inspiring than that.
The miner's strike of 1984 - 1985 saw many families suffer great hardship as striking workers lost all their pay and benefits. Food collection and distribution points like this one at Weston Coyney were set up to help struggling people.
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