The Miner’s Strike: Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC)

 A group of women set up a campaigning group

On March 12, Arthur Scargill (President of the National Union of Mineworkers

(NUM):
● declares a general strike across the coal mining industry
● this means most of Britain's coal miners go on strike.
○ mines workers great concern= it's their livelihood
○ closing the mines would mean that many mining communities would
lose their main source of employment
● the strike brought about activism from all sides.
● even though Britain has no female mineworkers, women united with men in
opposition to the National Coal Board (a government agency) (NCB) and
Margaret Thatcher’s Government

The miners’ strike in 1984-85

 The Miners’ Strike of 84-85  an attempt by miners to stop the National Coal
Board (NCB) and the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shutting
down mines.
 The nature of the strike  British coal mines were partly nationalized.
o This means the conflict is directly between the state and the workers.
Thatcher wanted the mines closed or to operate exclusively on market conditions
 In line with her cut back policy the period when she was marketing many
things
On March 12, Arthur Scargill
 President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM
● declares a general strike across the coal mining industry
● means most of Britain's coal miners go on strike.
○ mines workers great concern it's their livelihood
○ closing the mines would mean many mining communities  lose
their main source of employment
● the strike brought about activism from all sides.
● Britain has no female mineworkers BUT women united with men in
opposition to the National Coal Board/government agency, and Thatcher’s
Government

“National Women Against Pit Closures: Gender, Trade Unionism and Community
Activism in the Miners’ Strike, 1984–5”.
 this paper: “…. will show how key questions caused divisions within the
national organization as it grew. In particular, activists were divided on
whether the movement should aim solely to support the strike or whether it
should have broader aims related to women's lives, gender and feminism.”
(p.1)

The group of women are supporting the miners by:

● raising funds
● organizing food distribution
● some active on picket lines
 ● marches
● travelled far and wide to speak and raise awareness.
● Encourage other women to join
○ many mines wives and miners were against the NUM and the
strike
● Provided a positive image to the cause
● appeal for basic working-class solidarity
what was their overall aim?

support miners and their families during the strike and protest the
Conservative government’s policy of closing mines and attempt to crush the
powerful (NUM) National Union of Mineworkers.
goal → to retain their way of life
The men should keep their jobs→ mines should stay open
The women received much publicity:
 how did the media portray these women?
 → as the supportive wives and daughters of miners, loyally performing a kind
of domestic role that enabled their men to maintain the strike.
 however: Not everyone involved fitted the description of “miners’ wives”
The article focusses on:
1. the group of women from Barnsley
→ already highly politically active
→ many were steadfast Socialists, Communists and/or feminists (82)
o not politically naïve example: Jean McCrindle (p. 80)
 lecturer, an activist for the left since the 1950s, links to Arthur Scargill
2. the group and Arthur Scargill constructed the image of the NWAPC organization
 as a group of politically naïve miners’ wives for political reasons.
 women portrayed themselves as ordinary miners’ wives BUT they were not
politically innocent
 hid their political identity to win public sympathy in the strike
3. some members of the NWAPC had another agenda
 saw the strike as a vehicle for a broader, transformative Socialist-feminist politics
4. Arthur Scargill: heavily involved with organizing and constructing the group
counter views?
Some claim the women were politically naïve:
● Jean Stead’s 1986: (…) unprecedented, spontaneous, huge in scale and
transformative for gender roles. The classic example is Jean Stead’s 1986
account Never The Same Again: Stead argued that the women’s movement
represented an authentic working-class feminism, and wrote that ‘the miners’
wives’ response … was spontaneous..” (p. 79)
● Martin Adeney and John Lloyd’s journalistic study of the strike,
 argued that the movement had made more women ‘politically aware’ (79)
This article claims that is not true:
· “Many of these women may indeed have been in some senses ‘ordinary
miners’ wives’, but they were also emphatically not the political innocents which
they would deliberately portray themselves as during the strike.” (82)
--> the women were already organized and politically active
→ Women’s support group was not without precedent. (80)
examples:
○ In Kent
■ women had been active in the 1972 and 1974 miners’ strikes, then
called Aylesham Ladies Action Group
 ■ reunited in 84’ to think about how to support the new strike.
(80)
○ In Nottinghamshire
■ activist Rita Abbott said that
■ ‘the work of 1984/5 was a follow-on of what we did’ in 1972
and 1974. (80)
o Chesterfield Women’s Action Group
■ they knew each other when they had been on a NUM’s weekend
course
■ campaigned together for Labor’s Tony Benn in the by-election
What was the purpose of the movement?
there were 3 purposes:
1. Miners wives wanted:
their husbands should keep their job
→ maintain the family livelihood
2. drew mining communities closer together solidarity
3. NUM: Could use NWAPC as a weapon in their campaign
“…the leadership of the NUM became increasingly convinced that the
women’s movement could be an important weapon in the strike.”
(86)
“The ‘ordinariness’ and respectability of women like Anne Scargill
meant they garnered very different coverage to that of the NUM.”
(86”
→ the women provided a positive image
→ BUT did not want the women from CP at the forefront or as
members of NUM
 4.. The political women:
→ The aims were not just to secure the future of the mines and the jobs of
the miners, but also the promotion and development socialist and/or feminist
ideas
 “Some of those involved in WAPC wanted to turn it into a vehicle for a
much broader progressive politics—feminist, Socialist, far left, or some
combination of those things.” (92)
They also regard the strike as a feminist/socialist struggle
They had an awareness to wider issues and its implications for the future.
How WAPC were organized?

● A support group, NOT members of the union (NUM): however

● Arthur Scargill was greatly involved in the running of NWAPC
● present at meetings.
● Involved with ideas and strategies for NWAPC
● → purpose → attempt to control and monitor the organization
● a rule was also set out that 75 per cent of representatives to national
conferences must be related to miners
What did they to win public support?
● Deliberately hid their connection to the CP as it was very unpopular due to
cold war:
○ ” The connections of the Barnsley group and WAPC more broadly with
the CP were consistently and deliberately obscured in the movement’s
media strategy.” (84)
→ some of the women tried to portray themselves as “ordinary” to keep the
media on their side
 → The workers are worried about losing public sympathy as there was a strong
campaign against the strike in the media.
→ One of the accusations has been that the strike was funded by the Soviet
Union.
“for working-class women to gain legitimacy, they had to disavow an explicitly
political identity.”
Carol Stephenson and Jean Spence:
→ To be able to get aid: working-class women had to perform a brand of
domestic femininity in order to demonstrate proof of their genuine working-class
identities.
“They felt they benefited from emphasizing they were housewives and mothers,
and highlighting their roles preparing food and care-giving in order to show they
were deserving of aid.”

SOURCE:

Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Florence, og Natalie Thomlinson. “National Women Against Pit

Closures: Gender, Trade Unionism and Community Activism in the Miners’ Strike,
1984–5”. Contemporary British History 32, nr. 1 (2. januar 2018): 78–100.
(Link: http://tinyurl.com/yds5kco7 )

Howell, David. ”Defiant dominoes: working miners and the 1984-5 strike.” in
Jackson, Ben and Robert Saunders. Making Thatcher’s Britain. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 148-164.