Complexities of class and gender relations: recollections of women active in the 1984-5 miner's strike.

Introduction

This fight does not just belong to the men, it belongs to us all ... In this country we aren't just separated as a class. We are separated as men and women. We, as women, have not often been encouraged to be involved actively in trade unions and organising. Organisation has always been seen as an area belonging to men. We are seen to be the domesticated element of the family. This for too many years has been the role expected of us. I have seen a change coming for years and the last few weeks has seen it at its best. If this government thinks its fight is only with miners they are sadly mistaken. They are now fighting men, women and families. (Lorraine Bowler in Barnsley Women Against Pit Closures [1984] p. 23)

Lorraine Bowler delivered these stirring words to around 10,000 women, many from the evolving networks of mining support groups across the UK, at a milestone rally organised in May 1984 by Barnsley Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) (1). By this time, the 1984-5 strike was into its third month, and women's active support was gathering pace. The consensus in the literature is that they were galvanised into action by the need to combat hardship and poverty, felt initially by single striking miners and then families, caused by the draconian strike benefit rules imposed by the government.

The origins of the women's involvement are thus thought to lie in their traditional domestic role, with the organisation of fundraising, communal kitchens and food parcels seen as an extension of skills deployed in the home, and this was certainly one dominant image of them in the media (Seddon, 1986; Witham, 1986; Phillips, 1987; Stead, 1987; Allen, 2001). As the strike wore on, the most active became engaged in extensive networking and fundraising both in the UK and abroad, and spoke alongside men on national and international political and trade union platforms.

Some participated in militant protests on picket lines, at times against the wishes of their menfolk and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Comparing the extent and range of women's activities, their self-organisation and their staying-power with that of previous miner's disputes has led most commentators to consider that the women's action was unprecedented (Witham, 1986; Warwick & Littlejohn, 1992; Allen, 200l). It has been more temperately observed that the majority of women in mining communities were not active or active to the same degree in this dispute (Winterton & Winterton, 1989; Waddington et al., 1991; McIntryre, 1992), although many participated in less visible forms of support through the help they provided and received from extended family and friendship networks (Measham & Allen, 1994).

Lorraine Bowler's Barnsley speech captured the potential tensions of women's mobilisation in the complex context of class and gender relations in traditional mining communities. The extent to which women's political consciousness was raised and gender relations transformed as a result have been dominant themes in the social science literature on women's role in the strike. The women's action was greeted with surprise and enthusiasm by those who considered that women had finally crossed the private-public divide in mining communities, and 'no longer identified themselves as "just" housewives and mothers, but as political beings' (Coulter et al., 1984: 204). Apart from containing implicit stereotypes of mining communities, such views have been criticised for the androcentric assumptions they make about what constitutes a 'political being' (Measham & Allen, 1994). For some, the possibility that women were 'no longer doormats' led to the view that a new working-class women's movement had been born (Segal, 1987: 23; Stead, 1987) that was feminist-inspired. This persisted even when women from mining communities contested such ideas (McCrindle, 1986).

Studies confirm that, during the strike, most women from mining communities did not think of themselves as feminists, the concept conjuring images of women whose values and lifestyle threatened family life and relationships with men (Loach, 1985; Bloomfield, 1985, 1987; Gibbon & Steyne, 1986; Shaw, 1993).

Rejection of the label 'feminist' was thought to signify class rather than gender identity as the basis of the women's action, with women in mining communities considered to have 'more in common with their working class "oppressors" than with their middle-class "sisters"' (Ali, 1986: 102). But there was evidence, as well, that gender relations were contested during the strike as women asserted their right to a place in it (Loach, 1985; Gibbon & Steyne, 1986; Shaw, 1993; Allen, 2001).

It has been argued on the basis of such experiences that 'a campaign that was ostensibly to defend social relations was thus, by the very nature of activism and struggle, to transform those relations' (Allen, 2004: 55). Based on the evidence from our research, we regard this and other related claims that women achieved 'a political identity' as a result of strike action (Gier-Viskovatoff & Porter, 1998) to be overly simplistic.

In this paper, we argue for a less comfortable perspective that allows for ambivalence rather than certainty as the basis for understanding women's experiences of the strike, its aftermath and legacy. In so doing, we borrow insights from the work of Bauman, who has argued for a sociology that does not try to avoid complexity or to impose clarity where it may not exist (Bauman, 1990). In his view, ambivalence and uncertainty are experienced as threatening when people or ideas do not easily fit into predefined categories--a reaction that can lead to simplification and denial (Bauman, 1991). (2) This approach is useful for considering women's views about the shifting and at-times fragile nature of solidarity in the strike, including their own vulnerability and doubts. We have received support from the women participants in our research for the main argument of the paper: that the political and historical record of women's activism in the strike has more integrity if we focus on their intricate and sometimes contradictory experiences, rather than indulging in romanticised accounts.

In order to illustrate this perspective, we explore four areas of women's experience: personal strength and vulnerability; solidarity, support and betrayal; solidarity amongst women, and dilemmas of sisterhood; and solidarity with men, and power struggles. In so doing, the complexities of class and gender relations are considered through the voices of women.

The qualitative research on which this paper is based was conducted in the North East of England, in County Durham and Northumberland, in the two-year period after the 1984-5 miner's strike ended and, as part of an ongoing study, more recently during 2002-4. (3)

The studies were designed following a grounded theory approach, and have employed a combination of methods informed by feminist principles of enquiry (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Stanley & Wise, 1983; Harding, 1987; Maynard & Purvis, 1995). In the first study, conducted during 1985-7, thirty-two women in mining communities, who had been active in the strike, participated in semi-structured group and individual interviews with the researcher, who was also an active member of a support group until its demise in 1991 (Shaw 1993).

Most of the women interviewed during the 1985-7 period were still meeting in four remaining support groups, although with much-depleted memberships. Their ages ranged from 20 to 60 years old. In 2002-4, nine women from the original study were traced and reinterviewed in order to explore the impact of the strike on their lives and communities. (4) The paper also draws upon discussions at the WAPC (Women Against Pit Closures) conference forum (hereafter referred to as 'the forum') in 2004, at which women considered the legacy of the strike for their communities, and which is summarised in the preface to this special edition (Suddick, Preface).

Personal experiences of strength and vulnerability

There has been a good deal written about and by women concerning their positive experiences of finding individual strength and confidence in the strike through their wide-ranging and extensive activities (for example, Bloomfield, 1985; Eppleton Miners' Wives Support Group, 1985; Newton, 1986; Sheffield Women Against Pit Closures, 1987; Salt & Layzwell, 1986; Coventry Miners' Support Group, 1986; Miller, 1986; Witham, 1986). Two accounts in our recent study illustrate some of the feelings of women as they looked back on what they had accomplished, with the first expressing amazement at what was achieved collectively, and the other recollecting feelings of super-human strength.

   In retrospect all this sounds very organised, and to a
   degree perhaps it was, but it was also chaotic at times.
   Just writing it down shocks me--how did we manage to
   achieve all this in such a short time scale? (Doreen, 2003)

   I could have slain Goliath, I could have. (Phyllis, 2004)

Phyllis's image of her transformation into David captures the energy and creativity released through the strike, celebrated in the many pamphlets produced by women's support groups. The discovery of individual talents and skills and the excitement of living the protest to the full shine through in the narratives of every woman. The bonds that were formed were strong in many cases, particularly where women relied on one another for emotional and practical support. These feelings were recaptured by Dot, the leader of a support group in an isolated village.

   I have never met anybody in our village yet that said they
   wouldn't have gone through it again. Friendship,
   friendship, we looked after each other. (Dot, 2002)

Closer to the strike, Sandra, a young mother, spoke of the confidence she gained to speak her mind in Dot's group, and to join in rallies and fundraising activities, and explained how she drew her strength to keep going from the support group, particularly its leader who recognised when she was feeling desperate:

   There was times when I was really desperate ... Being
   the only one with a baby, I got tret a bit more special like
   but I had to do it without the others knowing, Dot would
   say 'Here's an extra packet of biscuits'. Dot really stuck
   by me. (Sandra, 1986)

Sandra's reference to the need to hide the special treatment she received indicated the potential tensions underlying this act of kindness from Dot who, as a trusted leader, could not afford to offend others. It shows that the emotional and practical support provided in this way could be crucial in helping to keep members staunch, but was a delicate matter. Joan, another very active group member, spoke warmly about the close relationships between the women, particularly through the sharing of private troubles, something she felt would not have happened in her village before the strike. In spite of this, she revealed how she had asked her husband to go back to work six months into the strike. She spoke of her weakening resolve in harrowing terms.

   The half of me that wanted him to go back was because
   of the bairns [aged nine, eleven and fourteen]. They were
   all good eaters, well you felt awful when you had to say
   'You can't have any more of that'. It used to choke me. I
   had two dogs, which had to be fed, and their food had to
   be cut down. I've seen me go two or three days, I used to
   have a cup of tea and if there was nobody around I'd have
   a slice of toast and then I'd say to Pete, 'I've had mine'.
   He knew I hadn't mind, but you see you tried to do that
   so that the bairns came first. (Joan, 1986)

Joan's account was given in confidence, and she allowed it to be used as long as it was anonymous and not fed back to her support group. The reasons for this were complex, and included her shame about thinking the unthinkable, but also fear of the approbation that breaking the strike would bring. For Sandra, group support was crucial in order to combat the deprivation of the strike. Its potential withdrawal was perceived as devastating by Joan, not just materially but emotionally and socially, as she revealed in her reflections about what might have happened had her husband given in:

   Mind, after they went back I was pleased he stuck it out
   like, because I don't think I would have liked neither
   myself nor him for going back because of the hassle the
   others got for going back. I wouldn't have liked to think
   I was going around the village and them calling me a
   scab and bypassing you after you'd been friends with them
   all those years. (Joan, 1986)

The strong bonds and the interdependency within the groups were nurturing, enabling and positive, particularly when women felt vulnerable. At the same time, dependency on the group could increase feelings of vulnerability, with worries about letting others down, and being cast out. Such emotions are not usually mentioned in relation to women's experiences of the strike, possibly because they disrupt the preferred script that they were unproblematically caught up in and empowered by bonds of solidarity.

Solidarity, support and betrayal

The tension between remaining resolute and feelings of vulnerability became more pronounced as Christmas 1984 drew near. Women still recall this as a turning-point in the strike, as men increasingly returned to work, and look back at that Christmas as a time highly charged with negative and positive emotions. Most recall it as the best Christmas of their lives.

   Then they went to work at Christmas and it was just
   horrendous. It was people I had known for years and who
   I never ever dreamt would do that--never in a million
   years. If somebody had said to me, they'll go back to
   work, I would have said no, no never, and I have never
   spoken to them since ... I mean Christmas was just
   incredible, it was probably one of the best we've ever had
   and we had nothing. I mean you found out who your true
   friends were by Christmastime. (Catherine, 2003)

As women look back on that Christmas, they remember the support they received from their families and also from further away as food and funds came from supporters across the world. The support-group networks in County Durham and Northumberland launched a 'Toy and Turkey' appeal and achieved wide support, something still recalled as 'wonderful' twenty years later.

   Oh it was wonderful, and France sent loads of frozen
   chickens ... We had a toy for every child and a chicken
   for every family for Christmas, and with the help of all
   those people it was wonderful. (Phyllis, 2004)

Similarly, the support and solidarity provided by other trade unionists is still vividly recalled, as women look back on a Christmas that was special for revealing how generous others could be. Liz, below, remembers her visit to East Germany as one of the defining moments of her personal experience of the strike:

   I've got to say the trip to East Germany was fantastic ...
   What they did, the East German miners took us all to a
   department store ... the generosity of these German
   miners--and they didn't have much. (Liz, 2003)

The solidarity within mining communities and the support offered from other similar communities are remembered warmly as a great source of strength in the struggle, and are often recalled in contrast to the lack of support offered by traditional allies such as the Labour party. By contrast, the gradual breakdown of solidarity in the mining communities is remembered bitterly to the present day, as Catherine's words, above, remind us. For her, those who went back to work crossed the line and made themselves outcasts. This was not an unfamiliar response from the women in the immediate aftermath of the strike. But such feelings towards scabs were complicated for women by their loyalties to husbands and families, a reflection of at least one very important aspect of their identity as guardians of family relations. In order to illustrate this, we draw on the reflections of Alice, a staunch supporter of strike action, as she considered the complexity of her family situation and the dilemmas caused for her by a policeman brother and a sister whose husband worked during the strike.

   I have a brother, a policeman; to me, I'm the soft one, I
   still speak to him ... and also a sister whose man worked,
   and she came to see me recently. Here's me sister standing
   in the yard and she just looked at me and she started
   crying and she says, 'Can I come in?' Well I hadn't the
   heart to turn round and say, 'I'm sorry'. I just brought
   her straight in. I can't bear a grudge ... I think a family
   should stick together through thick and thin, but my
   family has been broken up ... the strike has caused most
   of this. It has broken a lot of people up ... to me, a scab
   is one who worked all through the strike but these ones
   that went back three weeks before the strike ended, I don't
   think they're scabs. I think it's financial worries that drove
   them back. (Alice, 1987)

The fragility of the line between those on the inside and those cast out is implicit in Alice's concern that men who went back towards the end of the strike should not really have been seen as scabs, but as people who finally gave in to financial worries. It seems to us that her ties to members of her family heightened her ambivalence about scabs. Similarly, Moira looked back on her dilemma over treating scabs as if they were nothing else:

   But there was one or two men going back to work and
   they called them scabs you know, and I used to say, oh I
   don't like that name ... The men and all that and the
   women were all shouting--even our women were shouting,
   'Gerr you scabs', and I was saying, 'Eh, don't say that,
   don't call them that, they are somebody's husbands and
   fathers'. 'Softy' [the women called her] And I was shouting,
   'Don't go to work son', and me mates said to me, 'Oh
   shut up' and I was saying, 'No, no I canna help it.' (Moira,
   2003)

Moira was aware that her unwillingness to categorise men breaking the strike as simply scabs, but to see them as well as 'somebody's husbands and fathers', was unusual and unpopular. The memory of those who broke the strike can linger long in the collective memory of mining communities, but it was interesting to find that in recent interviews, strong feelings about the betrayal by scabs and the impact on families rarely surfaced. However, as is illustrated by Liz, one of the few women who spoke about it, the ambivalence lingers on even when family rifts have been healed, and the scab problem submerged.

   My husband ... he had a brother in Nottingham who
   actually worked all during the strike, and that tore the
   family apart quite a bit. It's back together now, but there
   is always that, you know. (Liz, 2003)

These recollections of support and betrayal of the cause point to the complexity of the concept of solidarity, which, both as an ideal and as a reality, is intersected by different and at times shifting allegiances and ties.

Solidarity amongst women and dilemmas of sisterhood

Solidarity amongst women in mining communities came mainly through local support groups, which sometimes also included striking miners and women and men from non-mining backgrounds. Various networks brought together women from different mining communities and joined them with other supporters, such as women from Greenham Common (Segal, 1987; Phillips, 1987; Shaw, 1993). Such links were regarded as refreshing evidence of new understandings of struggles that could bind rather than separate women (Wilson & Weir, 1996; Rowbotham, 1989). Within both the groups and their networks, women recollect the positive bonding that occurred between women, as well as some of the difficulties. For example, Doreen spoke about 'togetherness' and feelings of 'sisterhood' as her strongest contemporary memories of the support group in her village:

   The togetherness we all shared, the friends we made, the
   excitement and adrenalin rushes we all had and the
   achievements we didn't think possible--it seems strange
   to talk about such happiness in such a difficult time.
   However, there was such a feeling of sisterhood the like
   of which we had never experienced before and probably
   will never experience again. (Doreen, 2003)

But relationships in support groups were often strained, and accounts of the tensions that arose and ran alongside the positive experiences were common in the immediate aftermath of the strike, when the groups were breaking up (Shaw, 1993). When first interviewed two years after the strike had ended, Doreen talked about how tiredness and anxiety threatened the bonds of the support group, and how by Christmas, women's relationships were becoming tense.

   There was a lot of antagonism by Christmas, people were
   tired and they snapped at one another and we all did that.
   It was lucky that we all recognised that and then we said,
   we said, 'I'm sorry, I'm tired' ... But a lot of the friction
   that was there between women was tiredness, tired and
   tense; it wasn't just tired, you were really worried. Things
   were just going on and on. There seemed never to be an
   end. You were frightened because you didn't want there
   to be an end--you did but you didn't, because you knew
   a lot of togetherness. It was the common cause that held
   you together, not necessarily desperately liking each other
   but desperately needing each other. It was just a very
   strange time. It seems like a dream. (Doreen, 1986)

Doreen's account graphically illustrates the fragility of relationships within her group, arising from fear and stress. She brilliantly depicts the complex and contradictory emotions of women who felt that the hardship would never end, wanting it to, and yet not wanting to lose the 'togetherness' they had forged through mutual necessity. For those women in leading roles, feelings of strength through group solidarity were counterbalanced by anxieties about the delicate nature of their task, demanding almost daily political decisions about how to keep that solidarity going.

   It's not always nice being in the Chair--you had to explain,
   say, 'Now, you know that you really aren't in desperate
   need'. See, you had to get it to the ones who were
   desperate without upsetting the others to the point where
   they would go back to bloody work, so you had to decide
   which is the lesser of two evils here. (Phyllis, 1987)

As the women look back now, it is rare for memories of managing the tensions or of fractured relationships in groups to be recalled, but these were vivid in the years immediately following the strike. Similarly, links with other women, welcomed as a source of support, were also viewed as fragile, as exemplified by the relationship between 'miner's wives' and 'Greenham women'. (5)

Their mutual solidarity was positively expressed through active participation in each other's struggles. Women participants in our research had visited Greenham, and spoke of their admiration for Greenham women; but they did not identify with their separatist politics, and this became the source of considerable tension at a specially convened conference in 1987 in Durham to bring women together from each protest (Shaw, 1993). (6)

Organised under the banner of 'LINKS', the purpose of the day was to plan an anti-nuclear action for Women's International Day for Disarmament (Suddick, 1986). (7) The leading speaker for Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) emphasised the connections made between pit closures, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons during the strike. She also drew attention to the links that had been made with Greenham, emphasising unity across difference. The leading speaker for Greenham, on a completely different track, defined the conference in feminist separatist terms as a 'women-only' event, because she considered that linking is a women's initiative, a women's way of working.' The underlying differences in understandings of class and gender politics pervaded the whole day, and caused considerable tension but remained unexamined. Jen, one of the national organisers of WAPC, was concerned that the conference had showed a lack of understanding and empathy from middle-class women--a not-uncommon experience for her during the strike.

   I've had a poem published in the Notts book, it sums up
   my feelings about how middle class women treated us
   and I think there are differences. That came to me because
   I had it all during the strike, being wheeled out at
   meetings, and women saying, 'you must have a meal with
   us', and 'this is meat'; yes, we had all that ... and they
   were amazed that you could write poetry, and amazed we
   women could sing--'my God, you're working class and
   you can do that!' (Jen, 1987)

Jen's account shows how deeply-felt were her experiences of estrangement from well meaning, middle-class women. WAPC women at the conference talked afterwards about how they had felt excluded, and how they considered their own interests to have been ignored. Above all, they objected to the unquestioned assumption that it should be a women-only event. As one participant explained, she voted with her feet.

   I came out [left before it was finished]. Well, there was
   nothing brought up about mines or anything like that. I
   think it was too much about the peace women, we didn't
   really talk about what the links are supposed to be, and I
   don't agree that men should be left out. (Shirley, 1987)

Shirley conveyed a strong sense of the gulf between herself and the peace women. Ironically, WAPC women felt that they had been given no space or voice at an event specifically called to reassert the links that had been made during the strike. The issues that were relevant to them were not on the agenda, and nor did they feel able to get them introduced. As one local supporter of both campaigns observed, differences were simply ignored by those in the dominant position.

As we move on to explore gender relations in strike action, it is apparent that women had to fight men in order to gain a voice and an organisational role in the strike. But from their accounts, it seems that they felt more confident struggling to win a place 'side by side with their men' (8) than in linking with middle-class women who demanded that they shouldn't, even though they were aware of some of the difficulties.

Solidarity with men and power struggles

   It was the women who kept the strike going. It wasn't the
   men. It was the loyalty of the women behind the men.
   (Dot, 1986)

Dot was firm in her belief that women kept the strike going and, like her, women participants in the research described their action as being in support of their men and their communities. Dot, like most of the women participants in the research, was married to a man who was a staunch activist, who did not oppose the women's contribution. This does not mean that women regarded relations with men, and particularly with the NUM, as straightforward and unproblematic. Many accounts were given in the early study of the difficulties women experienced in their dealings with local union lodges, reflecting research findings in other areas of the country (Loach, 1985; Miller, 1986; Gibbon & Steyne, 1986; Allen, 2001). For example, Jessie recalled the difficulties experienced by her support group:

   We invited the NUM and the Mechanics (9) to attend our
   meetings. Of course that wasn't reciprocated, I mean we
   were never allowed to attend theirs. I mean, we were told
   at one of our meetings, 'You talk a lot of rubbish', and I
   said, 'Well we canna get into your meetings to hear your
   bloody rubbish!' We had to sit on the stairs until we were
   admitted to the inner sanctum. (Jessie, 1987)

Jessie's reflections on the antediluvian behaviour of the NUM and Mechanics officials at local level, and their protection of 'the inner sanctum', indicate that another struggle was going on against exclusion, as well as the fight to win the strike.

Jessie felt that her group eventually achieved an uneasy truce with the men in the local lodge, largely through the good-humoured efforts of the women. She also shared her group's disappointment at being sent to the back of a procession with their banner after the strike ended--a story recounted to howls of laughter from the rest of the group:

   Women had never played their part as equals in their
   organisation and they came round eventually, but they
   still thought we were one step behind like. A funny little
   story--we had an NUM and Mechanics service in our
   village just after the strike; and the Mechanics, they've
   got an area banner, and well, we've got our own banner.
   Well, at the end of the strike we were all good friends
   and I thought we had established mutual respect and
   everything, so I went up to a lodge secretary and I said,
   'Where have we got to go?' I said, 'Can we go in front of
   your banner?' He says, 'What! What! You can't go in front
   of the lodge banner', so I says, 'Well where do we go?' He
   says, 'Behind the Mechanics', but I says, 'But the
   Mechanics are at the back'. He says, 'Well, you go behind
   the Mechanics.' And that's it in a nutshell, and that was
   straight after the strike! (Jessie, 1987)

Jessie and her group were both sympathetic towards men who weren't used to women breaking into their territory, and disdainful of their unwillingness to honour mutual respect. The story of the banners can be regarded as highly symbolic.

Despite all their efforts, the women were still not considered to be full partners after the strike. It was not only their banner that was sent to the back of the queue, but 'women's' understandings, issues and concerns. However, as Liz, another member of the group, ruefully observed, 'you couldn't change years of tradition overnight.'

These difficulties were not forgotten twenty years later. Jessie still vividly recalled the above events when revisited in 2003. Doreen provided an acerbic account of local troubles with the NUM lodge, and Jean reflected on the negotiations needed to get men to work with women.

   The MUM lodge was in charge of the food parcel acquisition
   and distribution. However, we were allowed to help with
   this (mainly packing the bags) ... I use the word 'allowed',
   as this was exactly how it was! Everything we did had to
   be approved by the lodge. If we had any ideas, we had to
   explain in detail how, when and why. If they had known
   anything about business plans I am sure they would have
   insisted that we submit them! The men were part of our
   fight. (Doreen, 2004)

   You see, part of it [Jean's role as coordinator] was the
   relationship with the miners at that time. It wasn't too
   good, you know, like some of the women couldn't get to
   talk to the men who were on strike. They were sort of
   alienated, so there has to be someone who sorted this out
   ... But what happened was that as a group, the women
   and the men got together and did things, it was a gradual
   thing during the strike, although some would like to tell
   you that it was harmonious from the beginning. Forget
   that! (Jean, 2002)

From these and other recollections of women, both close to the strike and more recently, we learn that women were acutely aware that they had to confront the masculine culture of the trade unions during the strike. Despite this, they mostly maintained a loyalty and commitment to their husbands and men of their communities, and were aware of more intricate ties that bound them across gender lines. For example, Joyce recollects the support given to her by the Durham Mechanics' Union when her mother died during the strike.

   I didn't have any money and my mother lived two hundred
   miles away, so I couldn't afford a wreath, I couldn't afford
   to get there, so who came to my help--Durham Mechanic's
   Union. If it hadn't been for them I wouldn't have been
   able to go to my mother's funeral, so I am very grateful
   to them. I owe them a lot, apart from all the things what
   they've done for me during the strike, so I support them,
   stand on the picket line ... that was what we called
   comradeship, sticking together, sharing what we had, we
   all did. (Joyce, 2004)

Joyce was conscious of the need, on occasion, to oppose men in the local lodge to claim a voice and a space for action, but she and others were committed to a joint struggle alongside men. If at times this required patience and diplomacy, then women considered that necessary in order to win the cause that united them.

Class and gender: The aftermath of the strike

From the vantage point of women in our studies, the opportunities for developing a grassroots women's movement out of the ashes of the strike were always remote. Of the period 1985-7, they pointed to the legacy of poverty, financial debt, demoralisation and physical and mental exhaustion afflicting families and communi-ties. They described how the collective infrastructure created during the strike, including impromptu childcare and financial help for transport to travel to meetings, had crumbled, and how what had been shared problems once more became private troubles for many. In addition, women reported that there were pressures on them to return to their pre-strike roles (Shaw, 1993).

Jessie, who was active in local labour politics before the strike and still is, encouraged her support group to follow suit, but she did not anticipate dramatic changes to women's lives.

   I never expected to go on as a mass movement after the
   strike, because I know the difficulties of working class
   women. I know my own difficulties that I've had over the
   years. I mean my kiddie's grown up now, but when she
   was small, my husband was working on night shift, or
   tub-loading, as we say here, and I was trying to educate
   myself, trying to do an A' Level in Economics, and I
   couldn't get to classes because I had nobody to look after
   the bairn ... I used to feel aggrieved but I thought, it's
   not my husband's fault that he's got to go to the pit to
   keep us alive, is it? You can't blame men for that situation,
   can you? (Jessie, 1987)

Jessie did not see her husband, or 'men', as responsible for her situation, although she confessed to feeling 'aggrieved'. Like other women in our research, Jessie saw the situation of working-class women to be defined largely by their intricate relationship to mining via the male members of their households; but although closely associated, it was never seen as identical to the class experience of men.

The women's understandings of changes to gender relations and domestic arrangements in the years since the strike are based on an analysis that labour-market changes and the loss of the pits, rather than activism in the strike, have bought them about.

   The majority of people in this area are still on the
   minimum wage you know, and that's where you've got to
   have two people working, and you rely on grandparents
   to look after the children. You see the granddads pushing
   the pushchairs. That was never seen in a mining village, a
   man pushing a pram. It is necessity. Things change. When
   it has to be done, people do it. (Liz, 2003)

As is shown in the preface to this issue, women's analysis of the problems facing ex-mining communities is similarly rooted in an understanding of the impact of the labour market upon class and gender relations.

This is graphically conveyed by the portrayal of alienated young working-class men as the main victims of the loss of the pits, and who no longer see the relevance of collective solutions. But during the WAPC forum, accounts of deprived and lost communities requiring effective government intervention were juxtaposed with more optimistic expressions of people coming together to reclaim their heritage (Suddick, Preface).

In terms of the longer-term impact of the strike on their lives, most of the women re-interviewed recently have remained active in local labour politics, or in less visible forms of community activism, reflecting their pre-strike involvements.

A few considered that the strike had taken them into local labour politics or into higher education. Liz, never active before, entered local politics after the strike and was undertaking her mayoral year when we met her again in 2003. Catherine went to university.

   I had been so involved with that for a year and it just
   consumed us ... then it was just--'What will I do now?'
   And I was miserable and Tom (her husband) had obviously
   gone to university, and I just thought well, use your brains
   for once ... I would probably have just plodded on the
   way I had. I would have just plodded on doing what I was
   doing. (Catherine, 2003)

Of course, it is not possible to know how Catherine's newly found energies, skills and experiences might have been used if the battle had been won. She is proud of having achieved a degree and a successful career as a social worker, in contrast to her earlier life, which she describes as 'plodding on'. However, she explains that she no longer has the same knowledge of what is happening in her community.

   Maybe that's because I'm at work and you know, I don't
   really know what's going on ... so it may be that there are
   things happening within the community that I know
   nothing about. (Catherine, 2003)

Catherine's sense of no longer being integrated into her community was something other women commented on as a loss, with respect to future generations, even though they were proud of the educational and employment achievements of children and grandchildren. In most cases, success of this kind meant moving away from home as part of the changes occurring in families and communities.

Recent interviews with women showed that they weighed up individual educational and career achievements against the impact on their communities of poor employment opportunities, an influx of newcomers with no knowledge of local history or traditions, and a sense of a loss of community values.

They looked back on the strike as a class war, which the miners lost, and they were realistic about the constraints on women to develop and carry forward a working-class women's movement subsequently.

However, they remain positive about their capacity to make a difference, and some have continued to work in various ways to support their communities, as has been found elsewhere (Spence & Stephenson, 2004; Waddington, 2003).

Conclusion

The research on which this paper is based is limited to time-bound enquiries conducted in one geographical area of the UK, and by the specific focus on active women. Any general conclusions we draw from it are, therefore, to some extent speculative. We did not aspire to offer a complete account of the dramatic events with which women were involved during the strike, or to deal with variations in women's experiences across the country. Such a project would have been different and much more extensive. Rather, we have attempted to provide glimpses of some of the ambivalence and complexities of active women's experiences, so as to show that simple or stereotypical accounts do a disservice to their history of activism. Through selected themes, we have tried to faithfully reflect the depiction provided by these women of what life was like for them during and after the strike. Their accounts of the difficulties of achieving and sustaining solidarity, and of the complexities of class and gender relations, provide an antidote to some of the romantic tendencies of literature reviewed earlier in the paper.

The women in our studies indicate that solidarity in the strike was a problematic ideal. They suggest that there were periods in which solidarity was achieved--within families, within communities, within the union movement, with the working class of other nations and with other campaigns such as Greenham--but that it was always under threat, often from loyalties that cut across each other. Support groups, often regarded as the mainstay of the strike, brought women (and others) together, provided emotional and practical support, and gave women confidence; but relationships in them were often delicate and tense. As we have seen, in belonging to support groups, women could be both empowered and at the same time experience increased vulnerability. To recognise these ambivalent experiences is to see what a remarkable achievement it was for the strike to have lasted so long--its long duration owing much to the women's supportive action.

Women activists in our research defined their action in the struggle in terms that echoed traditional understandings of class consciousness: for example, they often spoke in various ways of being engaged in a 'class war', and of fighting to save jobs and communities, but also in terms of the space they created as women in order to make a difference.

However, as working-class women they understood that class and gender were inseparable and intertwined--an understanding that informed their expectations of what was possible after the strike had ended. As one of the main organisers of the support groups in the North East reflected, attempts to pigeonhole the role of women were mistaken.

   That's where the feminists and the socialists and people
   like that made their mistake. I think they were expecting
   us to be at the forefront of a frightening women's
   movement, and I think they were expecting too much.
   (Jean, 2002)

The women's views on long-term changes in gender relations suggest that such modifications as have occurred owe more to the labour market and the loss of jobs bought about by the pit closures, rather than to women's activism in the strike. To recognise this is not to negate the important changes that individual women have forged in their lives, or their continuing active commitment in working for improvements in their communities.

During the recent interviews, and in the course of the forum, women confirmed many earlier good and bad memories of the strike; but it was interesting to find that the tensions experienced amongst women had been all but forgotten, whereas those experienced with members of the miners' unions had not. Few chose to talk about scabs and persistent family conflicts. The best memories of the strike were about personal development and experiences that support and contribute to shared interests and values; the creation of a fit between individual needs and collective needs, or what one woman described as 'a glimpse of socialism'. The worst memories were about fragmentation, the breakdown of solidarity and defeat, and what that has meant for individuals, families and communities. Some families and individuals have been able to move on, but the women look back with regret on what has been lost for their communities as a result of the closure of the pits.

Despite the ambivalence and difficulties experienced during the strike, none of the women expressed a wish that she had not been active. On the contrary, they felt, despite all the work, struggle, heartbreak and deprivation, that they would not have missed it for anything. It is remembered as a time of great excitement and exhilaration and, despite the eventual defeat, as a time of great achievements. The recent development of a national WAPC website shows the power and determination of remaining activists to reclaim the initiative so as to ensure that their role in the strike remains a matter of celebration, and is not forgotten (Suddick, Preface). In this sense, the collective spirit of the strike has been reignited, and working-class women will continue to generate their own history.

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Notes

(1.) Women Against Pit Closures was formed as a national organisation in July 1984.

(2.) Baumann developed these ideas in his analysis of the Holocaust (Bauman, 1991).

(3.) Monica Shaw, Carol Stephenson and Mave Mundy members of the Women's Mining Communities Research Group at Northumbria University, carried out the 20024 interviews. Monica Shaw carried out the study in 19857. This paper owes much to the discussions of the Research Group, which also includes Jean Spence from Durham University, Gemma Metcalfe from Newcastle University, and Anne Sudddick from Women Against Pit Closures.

(4.) All women participants in the research have been given fictitious names in order to protect their identities.

(5.)These terms were a commonly-used shorthand to express class difference and the different campaigns. For an account of the Greenham Common peace protest, see S. Roseneil (1995) Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham (Open University Press).

(6.) Some forty women, with a mix of Greenham women and women from WAPC groups, attended the conference held in Durham in 1987, and included WAPC members from the North East, Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent. Three young men were not permitted to stay, even though all were active supporters of WAPC, and one was a member of the Durham Miners' Support Group.

(7.) The purpose of LINKS was defined in a 1986 pamphlet by Anne Suddick, who had been a central organiser of the mining support effort in the North East during the strike, and was still a key activist in the fight against pit closures at the time of the conference. Her vision of LINKS was of a network of like-minded groups that could be called up when needed, somewhat modelled on the Greenham method of organising. It had been used to some effect in order to plan and mount demonstrations against the Chernobyl disaster.

(8.) This is a reference to the women's rallying song, 'Here We Go (for the women of the working class)', written by Mal Finch in 1984, and widely sung during and after the strike.

(9.) The Durham Colliery Mechanics' Union membership consisted of trained apprentices, i.e. colliery mechanics or electricians, or those whose job was designated as skilled for the maintenance of machinery and equipment. The Mechanics were part of the National Union of Mineworkers, but had a distinct structure, which was separate from members of the Durham Miners' Association.