'The past we inherit, the future we build' (1).

Twenty Years On: Challenges and Changes, voiced the feelings of many of the women reunited by their participation in the forum.

It was the kind of politicisation that comes only once in a lifetime, and as the result of struggle. The miners' strike of 1984-5 was the most brutal 'fight to the death' in recent times, in terms of the contradiction between the need of working-class people for social justice, and the demands of monetarism. The miners fought their corner; the government used the weapons of the state to fight its corner; and from the many coalfields, the women came out fighting to support their men and their communities, and to stave off the threat of unemployment for their children.

In July 2004, Northumbria University hosted a conference sponsored by Capital and Class entitled The Miners' Strike Twenty Years On: Challenges and Changes. The breadth and scope of the conference was wide-ranging, covering many aspects of the strike itself; the effect of the defeat of the NUM on trade unionism both in this country and abroad; the influences of capital on events in communities; and the gender roles and class issues that were exposed as a result of the strike.

Some of the issues raised at that conference will be explored in this edition of Capital & Class; but in effect, this represents just the tip of the iceberg of a series of papers delivered at the conference with great depth and sincerity, and with the luxury of hindsight and research resources. This allowed for a series of detailed discussions on a range of issues that the strike had laid bare. However, what was really different about the conference was the wide range of activities and people who gave of their time and effort. In conference sessions, there was the usual political and theoretical debate, but what was unusual was that many activists (some academics, others not) joined the conference, and remembered their involvement in the events of twenty years ago in song and laughter and tears. The conference was timed to coincide with the Durham Miners' Gala, a traditional parade of marching bands and banners that has taken place annually for more than a hundred years, and in which many of the conference delegates participated. There was an evening at the Gala Theatre in Durham, where an emotional audience revisited the solidarity and enthusiasm that were so evident in 1984-5.

The organisation of the conference was linked to a women's research project into the consequences of the miners' strike for the women in the North East who participated in that struggle. As a result of this, a group of eighteen women activists attended the conference so that they could have a forum discussion about the issues most important to them, and to decide whether there were grounds to reunite twenty years on.

As always, when women work closely together under extreme circumstances, it was the shared experiences of the strike that were brought to the surface in the forum discussion at the conference. The women talked about friendship, and about the things that happened to them and the things they did together that had an impact upon themselves and the lives of others. A lot of people talked about how much they enjoyed the year of the strike, even though it held so many difficulties and so much pain:

'I'll never forget, and never ever want to forget, you know it was the best year of my life.'

'I made friends I wouldn't have made. As they have all said, we don't see them often, but when I do, it all comes back.'

'I got to see what the great things were that came out of it, there was a certain amount of collective activity came out of there, there was certainly a certain amount of politicisation that came out of it, there were all kinds of friendships that were struck up--there was a whole series of things that were absolutely positive.'

Change was a theme of the discussion. One woman told of her activities on the picket line during the strike, and remarked wryly,

'Before the strike I was a confirmed pacifist and spent time at Greenham.'

Others remembered enduring difficulties together, and having things happen to them which might otherwise have been unimaginable. Some talked of having to delve into the welfare rights of strikers and their families, and translating that knowledge into action:

'We had a welfare rights [team] then, had a little place in the Town Hall where it was open every single day.'

Another woman told of how the equipment needed for the provision of meals had been obtained for their kitchen:

'Literally we went up and we emptied the pit canteen of all the cutlery, we had plates, cups, sweets, whatever was in the pit canteen we emptied and we used, and they never, ever got it back.' (Laughter)

Women told of their experiences on the picket line, and their treatment by the police on arrest. One woman spoke movingly of one picket:

'We had three of our women arrested during the strike.'

As the forum discussion progressed, thoughts turned to the organisation of support during the dispute, and about how that organisation had had a particularly female inflection. Women didn't have the same institutional support as the men:

'My husband always knew he could go to Wearmouth [his workplace, a colliery on the north-east coast of England], but there was never any talk about what women did, and you had to find that out for yourself, and that's the bit that I feel I was left out, but not for long.' (Laughter)

Many miners lived in former mining communities where pits had been closed before the strike occurred. The National Coal Board had a policy at that time of not making mineworkers redundant, and bussed these men to working pits; some undertook a round trip of eighty miles in order to get to their workplace. In the North East of England, this meant that in many instances, the men and women who were directly involved in mining, and therefore in the strike, were in the minority within what were their former mining communities. These isolated mining families needed support, and a raft of support groups sprang up to do just that. It was essential that an umbrella support group be formed to bring together all these autonomous support groups, and when that was formed and began to meet in Durham, isolated travelling miners and their families were able to make links with others. In the same instance, the level and effectiveness of the support organisation stepped up a gear:

'You got to know everybody throughout the area, you know, you didn't feel isolated once you went to Durham, and I think that's what we needed because I think in the villages, a lot of pit villages, you are isolated, and we needed that feeling that we weren't isolated any more and there was somebody there to help you and to give you advice.'

'The thing became much more political when we got the Durham Area Support Group going. Because there, we also had speakers along to tell us about, you know, the energy policy, and nuclear policy and all that kind of thing.'

Crucially, the support groups and the umbrella group had a totally different way of working and organising to that of the NUM. Within the NUM, issues were raised at branch level; then, when approval was gained, these were passed up to the branch committee, and anything that could not be dealt with locally would be sent to the area officials and subsequently to the area Executive Committee. If the issue proved to be a national issue, then it was forwarded to national level to be dealt with by the National Executive Committee. The structure in the Labour party was broadly similar.

Early on in the strike, the women decided that the structure of their organisation was to be different: it would take the shape of broadly autonomous support groups, which would send representatives, without number restrictions, to the weekly meeting of the umbrella Durham Miners' Support Group. Here, issues and ideas could be discussed and women could be directly involved, and decisions could be made there and then on that day. This produced a more fluid, flexible and immediate decision-making structure, and also meant that women were directly involved both at a local and an area level. As a consequence, women came to strongly identify with the area umbrella group, since it was accessible and effective.

This was a conscious decision by the women, who felt that this would allow them to effectively retain control of their activities; and it also facilitated the means to manage their affairs quickly, given the unpredictable and difficult situations that arose during the strike. These things included day-to-day problems with electricity and gas cut-offs, the allocation of resources and food vouchers, sending women on fundraising rallies and, of course, making sure that the women were fully informed on all the issues that arose from media bias in the coverage of the strike. It also enabled and facilitated a distinction between their organisation and the organisation of the NUM. This was crucially important, as when the funds of the NUM were sequestrated, the support groups were independent of the union and their funds could not be touched.

All the groups had free access to the coordinator of the umbrella group and to meetings, and this meant that local problems could be dealt with effectively and efficiently:

'... And what was wonderful about that organisation is it wasn't a delegate organisation--if you wanted to be involved, you went, and that was its strength. Nobody was excluded.'

It was clear from the discussions that women understood that the women's organisational strategy in the strike was brought about by their experiences of the struggle to survive. It was about the realities of their lives and the lives of those around them, and their understanding of how important the pits were to the survival of their families and communities:

'We didn't have time to think, we didn't have time to discuss the rights or wrongs, the theory, whether we were left or right or wherever, we just did what we had to do.'

The women were also honest about their role in the strike and about the support they received, and were anxious to expose their weaknesses in order to learn the lessons of the struggle and to move forward. It was no surprise, given the strength the women showed during the strike, and indeed afterwards, that they became a dominant image for the Left, and that there has been a tendency to 'put them on a pedestal' and to be uncritical about their actions:

'But shouldn't we debunk the myths that we know perfectly well are wrong?'

'... Unless we cut through the mythology and say how it was, then we'll never be able to see where we could do things better another time.'

'If we don't do that, then we are not being honest to ourselves. If we did that with every single struggle that we were involved [in], it is no wonder that we are no further forward.'

In reality, only a minority of mining women actually became active in the dispute, and those that did have become the stuff of folk legend. They have become 'icons of the Left', and of feminism. At the same time, and while these women were in the minority, their commitment, drive and innovation gave testament to their strength of character and courage in taking on the struggle and achieving respect, despite all the odds:

'The women who worked in the strike were exceptions and the women kept going against all the odds, but they did not have the massive support of their community, they did not. They had to fight for every single victory.'

It was acknowledged that the national organisation, Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC), was never an organisation that was 'led from the top'. Different area groups had different priorities, identified by the groups in each locale. The role of WAPC was to embrace their differences and, where possible, to work together to promote the priorities of all the women's support groups from the coalfield on a national basis.

'Women Against Pit Closures has always been a loose network, a network of very individual groups ... there's never been a particular group that's been the representation of Women Against Pit Closures.'

Yet in the process of being involved in the struggle, the women generally became more aware of political positions and ideas. That the women had been politicised by their organising was confirmed by looking around the table: half of the women present held some political office. One had been mayor of Sunderland and another the mayor of Seaham, while others had held elected positions.

'I think we all became politicised--involved in politics, even though probably before the strike I was an armchair politician. I used to argue with the television, but after the strike, became very, very political.'

However, the discussion revealed that for the women of the North East, their political focus remained on the needs of their localities. The women are more interested in serving communities than in having sparkling political careers. This was evident both in the extent of their knowledge of the problems in their communities, and in their commitment to finding solutions to those problems. There is a definite love of the people and of the community, displayed in so many different ways; and there is more than a hint of bitterness that speaks of the hurt suffered by the community, which runs deep.

Women spoke of problems in the community that included youth disorder, drugs and unemployment, and women related these directly to the closure of the pit:

'I want to see the village I love regenerate itself. We've got the legacy of the colliery houses that were sold to private landlords, the legacy that brought in our children on drugs, unemployment. I want to see it rise again. The community spirit is still there ... as a mining village we still have a community spirit, but we must get, I'm going to say it, we must get the cancer out of the village, and the cancer's being brought through unemployment, and it's the legacy Thatcher's brought with Thatcher's children.'

As everybody predicted during the strike, mining communities have suffered dreadfully from problems associated with unemployment since the strike. There was a general consensus that a lot of the problems in the communities had been the lack of employment prospects for both the mineworkers who had been made redundant, and their children, who had few substantive job opportunities to look forward to:

'It's because of unemployment.'

'... [It's] related to the lack of jobs, the lack of options, lack of prospects.'

Youth disorder was seen as a direct reaction to the loss of choices, and to the perception of a bleak future. The pit-closure programme and the subsequent loss of employment prospects had led to a disconnection with organised labour, and to the possibility of collective solutions to the problems their communities faced. There was particular concern for the impact of pit closures on young men:

'Just for me there has been, probably since the mid-eighties and the pit closures, an issue around gender, and male gender and masculinity and how young men connect with the rest of us really, and I think if there have been victims ... the real losers since the closure of the pits have been young working class men ... and I'm not sure what we can do to reconnect, to re-engage with society, because they don't see political involvement for many of them as a way forward ... it's almost an abdication of political participation amongst many young men in this area. They don't see solutions--collective solutions--anymore, they have lost maybe a connection to the union that they would have had or connection to work or connection to family, whatever, and it's a real tragedy the way capitalism has chewed them up and spat them out and abandoned them and moved on to the next.'

Given the negative feelings within mining communities towards police participation in the strike, it is understandable that police action to deal with current social problems has not always been welcomed. The problems are very real, however, and the action taken by the police, if drastic, had some support among the women, which illustrates the extent of local concern:

'In Seaham, I don't know if you have been reading the newspapers, but they've got the anti-social behaviour curfew on and some of the people were playing war because, they said, oh the good kids are going to get run out--but the good kids are not getting roped in. The police know who they are, they know who they want and they get them off the streets.'

Although this is seen as a community problem, the women wanted to look to the government for a more effective means of tackling the root cause of crime and low-level disorder. The women felt that this criminalising of young people was a reaction to the symptom, rather than a strike against the cause of the problem itself; the primary need was for suitable opportunities for young people:

'I think that the government really do need to address activities for young people and the employment issue.'

The closure of the pits had contributed to the decline in the quality of life in former mining communities. Yet government initiatives to replace the industrial base of the communities were met with scant regard:

'Get our kids off these daft schemes what's going on.'

The poor state of housing stock was also an issue for the women, and the New Labour strategy for overcoming this problem was heavily criticised. Some of the women participating had ties with the Labour party prior to the dispute, and had maintained these since. Being involved in the Labour party, however, did not stop them from criticising New Labour when its policies were deemed to be less than adequate:

'I've become a recent new Chester-le-Street district councillor ... this time we are deciding what we are going to do with the council houses ... The government will not give local authorities the money to put them right. Yet they'll give a housing association that money, so why can't they do it with a local authority?'

One woman who had maintained her involvement in the Labour party had fought to bring attention to colliery houses, the poor repair of which was an affront to the proud history of mining and mining communities. There was shared congratulation when women felt their hard work was producing real benefits to the community:

'We have just been granted 6 million [pounds sterling] for English Partnership to deal with our old colliery houses. We've also built a brand new one-stop shop. It's the first of its kind; it's education, housing company, doctors, creche, you name it we have it--we have a brand new centre in the ... heart of the village.'

The women also discussed and debated the attitude of the Labour party both during and following the strike. They remembered with some passion the ambivalence of the Labour party to the strike, and reflected on the recent decisions made by New Labour to go to war in Iraq:

'Barbara left the Labour party after the strike, having been a councillor, because she tore her card up, 'cos she thought it was a bloody disgrace what Kinnock did.'

'I thought that the real battle ... that was taking place inside the working class, and that was the battle to say ... you should not cross a picket line, the battle to say these men have right on their side, the battle to say where the hell are your values ... they weren't just a one-off where you pray it stops and sort of stand up and make a resolution about something; they had to be fought day in and day out, because there was always somebody who wants the Labour party to be respectable, and you weren't respectable if you support strikers, and my God, you know, people were never going to win power if we support the strike.'

'No Labour party should be taking anybody to war. He invaded a country ... and that was wrong. No Labour government should take a country to war, they should discuss things.'

While none of the women showed any allegiance to the dominant politics of the Labour party in government, whether or not they were members, some of the women, however, continued to believe that it was better to remain in the party and to attempt to change it from within.

'You cannot fight a party from the outside, you have got to stay in it, you know, it is no use leaving ... That's why we stick in because we keep thinking we can do something about it.'

Having reached a level of honesty about the realities of the strike, and having explored the problems facing former mining communities, the forum turned its attention to the future, and to the question of whether there was to be any positive way in which these strong women could work together once again.

There were two distinct fields that the women felt they could contribute to and explore--education, and the writing of their own history. First of all, they discussed the issue of educating children about the strike. One woman spoke movingly of a question asked by her grandchild:

'... "Why did you go on strike to shut the pit?" I says, "But I've told you we weren't on strike to shut the pit, we were on strike trying to keep it going." He says, "But why, grandma? It's so dangerous in the pit, why were you striking to still go down the pit?"'

This provoked discussion on how the strike has been perceived even among families in former mining commu-nities:

'... I think a lot of children want to learn about the pit, what happened then. They are wanting to learn about the miners' strike and they want to learn about what the community's all about now, after the strike, and how to get it put back together.'

One woman told of the number of groups that had got together to retain the heritage of their communities through the commissioning of new banners, even though the pits had closed many years before.

Despite the closures, she argued that there was still strength of feeling about mining heritage in the North East, and that this was feeding new life into the Durham Miners' Gala, held each year. She described the way one group was taking that forward:

'... With the banner group for the Houghton and Lambton, they've actually set up an educational scheme as well.'

Another way forward was to explore the idea of setting up an exhibition that could be used in schools:

'Perhaps compile questions and answers. Questions that are being asked here at this conference, you know, the ballot, yes. Why do you want to go back down the pit, you know what's happening to the communities; is there anywhere within the national curriculum that would let us access through a history session?'

Another idea was to document our own history. Many individuals had written anecdotal accounts of their actions during the strike, and it was felt that this information could be collated and archived. The development of an archive would encourage women to tell the stories of their strike experiences, and how it had affected them. National Women Against Pit Closures had thought about this, and concluded that this could be done most effectively by creating a website. The idea went down very well, and private discussion among conference delegates raised the feeling that a website was a feasible possibility:

'It can be used to collate the history because of the things we envisage that it'll have, and discussion threads and discussion forums where people can tell their stories.'

'... Because one of the things that is very, very apparent is that none of us, during the strike, had time to tell our stories.'

'... It's contacts and networks that we need to maintain. I think because of the experience of the 1984 strike, we had ... an absolutely important role to play there ... it could possibly be done by the miners, but whenever did they get the women's stories right?'

'... Experiences were different everywhere ... every person had a different strike. All of our experiences were different and I would like to see that validated. Each other's different experiences, not to assume that there was a national experience or a wholly collective experience, they were very disparate and different but all valid ... I would like to see that 'cos I've seen all sorts of books about different areas ... it would be nice to be able to hear other women's experiences and communicate with them.'

It was felt that a vibrant and exciting website with email facilities, a search engine, a discussion forum and archived material gathered together, with links to the various networks that had supported the strike, would enable those in struggle to learn from the activities of the women, and provide an opportunity for:

'... everyone to air their views without these views being imposed upon them. And that's important!'

Women participants from the North East agreed to take this forward, as it would enable them to develop their skills and hasten the dream of the development of a national WAPC website. Through this, they could explore ways in which the lessons of the strike could be carried forward, including the whole issue of women's struggle with their gender role, their ultimate desire to debate and learn from the weaknesses and strengths shown in struggle, and their wish to pass those lessons on to a new generation.

The miners' strike was a pivotal experience for these women--a turning-point in their lives. Women were politicised by the strike, and those who attended the conference hold true to those politics, despite the difficulties with which New Labour present them. They are keenly aware of the problems of their community, and their politics are based in that community and reflect those concerns.

The women who met at Northumbria University in July 2005 were clear that they wanted to be remembered and understood through a realistic version of events, so that their version of the past might be documented for the next generation.

When conferences do something unusual, as was the case here; where non-academics have the opportunity to meet and talk and be listened to, they are allowed to engage in debates which both inform political theory and, hopefully, influence political action. Our thanks go, once again, to Northumbria University for offering its time and facilities so readily. For the women themselves? Well, as one person said, the years fell away when we met again, and we could feel again the strength of solidarity of effort that was so important to us during the strike. No one could walk away from the intensive discussion forum thinking that they should not move forward on the issues that had been raised.

Postscript 

This preface was discussed by the activist mining women of the North East. It was felt that the importance of the Durham Area Support Group could not be overstated. One woman commented:

'There was a real enthusiasm for that set-up and those meetings, which were in a sense the very essence of solidarity: that real feeling that you could go out and achieve things you never before would even think of doing. In a way, they captured everything the Left is supposed to be about: cooperation, solidarity, warmth and also having a bloody good time.'

The women loved those meetings, and would not have missed them. It is important to point out that the spirit of the women of 1984-5 lives on in those who continue to campaign in the interests of mining communities throughout all the coalfields.

Note:

(1.) This was the motto on the banner of the Durham Mechanics Association.