The miners' wives and the fight for women's liberation 'A woman's place is on the picket line', is the battle cry of the thousands of miners' wives in Britain who have so courageously fought the Thatcher government in the last eleven months in order to defend the mining communities. Whatever the outcome of the dispute, it is clear that it is these women, organised in their own groups in every striking pit village in the country who have held the strike together. The Tory government had been counting on getting the women to play a 'typical' strike-breaking role. The women of the mining communities have shattered the Tory image of the wife escorting her husband across the picket lines, and in the course of their struggle they have challenged many other traditional images of women.
"Today when a miner speaks at a meeting it doesn't have the same impact as having a woman. People were at first taken aback. They expected us to talk only about women's involvement in a very passive way and not give political speeches. And when they heard us, the reactions was, "What the hell is going on "' (1)
There are many factors which explain why the women are playing a much more key role in the strike today. Firstly, ten years of the women's movement definitely had an impact on these women and on the way they organised. Most miners' wives groups whilst they do organise food and clothes distribution (a vital task in the dispute) also have a life of their own. They have their own. bank account and in some cases organise women only pickets. Many of the women declare themselves influenced by feminism and some would call them-
Judith BAKER
Because of the tight knit communities in which the miners and their families live, the women have in fact played an active role in supporting previous strikes. Even during the 1926 general strike, the women were organised in support. And in the 1972 and 1974 miners' strikes the women were organised, but as many point out now this was only to work in the kitchens or to help with the food parcels. In this strike everything is very different. As Tricia Sutcliffe, a Kent miner's wife points out, In the 1972 and 1974 strikes we were doing the things women normally do - working in the kitchens, making food parcels. We did go on one picket in 1972, but that was a one-off thing. In 1972 we had joint demonstrations but organised by the NUM, not separate women's demos with husbands coming along, and women speaking on platforms was unheard of.
selves feminists.
Groups of miners' wives have been down to the Greenham Common peace camp during the strike and the Greenham women have actively supported the strike.
But apart from the impact of feminist ideas and the strength of women's exam1. All quotations from Kay and Tricia Sutcliffe are taken from an interview conducted in November 1984 by Jane Kelly. Unpublished.
'Instead of being in the kitchen, the women are out on the picket lines....
Kay Sutcliffe speaks
The following are major extracts from a speech made by Kay Sutcliffe, leader of the Kent miners' wives to a meeting organised by Socialist Action supporters in Penrhiwceiber, South Wales, on February 16.
...this government is launching an attack not only on the working class as a whole but on the mining communities. And you have to live in a mining community to understand why. I have a particular personal link with Penrhiwceiber because my father was born here and along with many other miners from Wales but also from Scotland, Yorkshire and the Midlands during the 1930s these men were forced out of these coalfields to find work elsewhere. And our coalfield in Kent was formed from amongst these men who travelled many, many miles on foot in order to make a new future for themselves and their families. That is why we're fighting now to keep our communities together. Our forefathers have fought for this. These communities are our right - we deserve to keep them and we will fight every step of the way to ensure that we do.
There is no point in saying that there are jobs elsewhere because we know that there aren't any jobs elsewhere. When they have put all the miners on the dole what will be the conse. quences? My father was a miner and he suffered a very serious accident at Snowdown (Kent) colliery. This meant that he was unable to work after his accident even though his mind was very active and willing. He wanted to go to work but it was physically impossible. I and my family watched him suffer 14 during his last four years in utter torment because he wanted to go to work. This is the kind of thing we don't want to see -our young men suffering years and years of torment because they want to work, they want to keep this country alive. They do not want to sit on the dole queues for the rest of their lives. They are not idle men despite what they would have us believe.
We have seen many attacks against the miners and the mining communities. Many tactics have been used by the coal board and the government; cuts in social security payments, the press and the media have been used against us and Arthur Scargill in particular. He is not the NUM personally, he is just a leader and I would like to add that he is one of the best leaders that any union has ever had. If the rest of the trade-union movement had leaders like Arthur Scargill, we wouldn't be in this position now.
We've seen a back-to-work movement that hasn't been very successful despite the figures that the Coal Board puts out on the television. We all know in our hearts that those men aren't going back to work. They can play about with the figures as much as they like.
We can all see for ourselves. What are those men doing? They are getting paid to sit on the pit top; they're getting paid to make cups of tea; paid to paint the pit top. They are not actually being paid to work. It's a waste of time and money. The real men are out on the picket lines. They're not scabbing on their own workmates.
International Viewpoint 11 March 1985
ple in struggle, women's actual lives have also changed a lot in the last ten years and these changes have had a big impact on women in the mining communities. The main change is that more and more women are going out to work (and this despite Thatcher's drive to get them back into the home).
Mary Davies of the Penrhiwceiber women's support group in South Wales described the impact that this has had to Socialist Action: Tes. More women work Socialist Action, a British revolutionary today in the mining communities than ever before. They got used to being independent. A lot have got part-time jobs mainly in factories or as school cleaners, working in the bakery or in the hospitals. We supported our husbands last time, just as much as now, but we didn't have as much freedom. I think women feel stronger minded today. Like the women at Greenham Common, who have shown that women can do things that men can do and even that men perhaps can't do - like survive all that hardship..."
Another thing that changed the women's attitudes and their involvement in the strike was the experience of police brutality early in the dispute. Many mining villages in Britain are now virtually permanently occupied by police. One could easily imagine that one was in Bel-
Kay Sutcliffe (DR) Kent. Like the women of Northern Ireland, the women of the mining communities live with this every day, and it has hardened their attitudes.
On the picket lines, the women have learnt at first hand about police violence, and it is a lesson that most of them will pot cal fole of the boys in reveal the not forget. To them, it has revealed the Sutcliffe of the Kent group described one morning's events:
"The police were just punching everybody. Six to eight people got arrested that day before the scabs came anygot arrested in all. We watched the police actually drag a bloke away who hadn't done anything. We can't go to our children and say, "If you're in trouble, go to the police. You can trust them." They [the children] call the police "pigs". Ten months ago I would have told them not to?
As well as themselves being directly influenced by feminism and the women's movement, the miners' wives have also inspired other women. This is important because of the Thatcher government's attacks on women's rights, which had played a big role in dispersing and demoralising sections of the women's movement. Behind them the miners' wives have rallied women from the Labour Party, women from Greenham Common and from women's groups all over the country. Women against Pit Closure groups, established in all the major towns, comprise women from many sections of the broad women's liberation movement. The miners' wives are in the leadership of a vital recomposition of the women's movement which could prove very important in the coming years.
The women's action has also had a massive impact in the Labour movement and in particular on the miners' union itself. On August 11, 1984, the first national demonstration in support of the strike was organised by the miners' fast or Derry rather than Yorkshire or where near the gate.
We've had the police thrown against us right from the beginning of this strike. Men in Kent have had their civil liberties taken away. They weren't allowed to go from Kent and up to the Yorkshire coalfield. Many of the men in Kent have links with men in Leicester because that is where they did their first lot of picketing.
We have seen that because of petty restrictions on bail conditions that have restricted movement on picketing line, the roles in many communities have been reversed. (1) Instead of the women being looked at as working in the kitchens, the women in many cases are now out on the picket lines and the men are in the kitchen, helping to feed the families.
When we consider the police activity against us, the way they fiddle about with film clips to show that it's the miners that are causing the violence, we all know that it's the police that are causing all the trouble.
We have got two Kent miners in jail for offences on the picket lines: Terry French has been jailed for five years for an assault on a police officer; Chris Tately has got three years in a remand home for an assault on a police officer. Those sentences were imposed on these lads on the very same day that a policeman that had assaulted his wife and put her into hospital was just fined one hundred pounds for an assault. When you consider these charges and see that these lads have been sentenced in the middle of an industrial dispute, they are in fact political prisoners and we ought to all take action to ensure that these people are all taken out of jail and let back into society where they belong.
The police activity has been stepped up since the 1974 strike; they have been trained for what they are doing. They've been trained hard. And we all know who they've been trained on and we've all stood back and watched it: the black people in this country, the gays and lesbians in this country, the Greenham Common women and the people in Northern Ireland.
How long have we sat back and watched what has been done to these communities? How long have we sat back and never taken up any action for them? None of us have done very much. But these people were out on the picket lines, out collecting for us, from day one. They have never turned their International Viewpoint 11 March 1985
Twenty-six people wives in London. Arthur Scargill, the backs on us and we should be ashamed that we ever turned our backs on them.
The tactic of the Tory government has always been divide and rule, worker against worker. They know that they will have a hard fight against the working class and they can't beat us if we stick together.
It's now that the TUC and the Labour Party should be thinking about what action they should take. We don't need Norman Willis to negotiate a settlement for the miners. We've got a good executive that can do that for us. What we need for Norman Willis and Neil Kinnock and others to do is to back us in the actions we've taken. The rank and file have done a lot in terms of picket lines and collections and we are very thankful for that. But these leaders are there to represent the working class and it's about time they did their jobs. And if they were getting paid as working class men are, then perhaps they'd fight a bit harder.
The workers have produced the wealth of this country for many years and it's about time they reaped the benefit.
We've had a lot of international interest shown in this strug. gle as well. They're looking to us to win this strike not just for the working class in Britain but for the working class throughout the world. We'd like to thank them all for the money and the food and even the action they've taken. From people in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union and even from countries as far away as Australia and Nicaragua.
We've got the next round of pay talks coming up with industrial action from teachers, railwaymen, council workers and particularly the rate capping on March 6. We've got to use that, use it together to fight together, to win for everyone, not just the mining communities.
If we all stick together, we'll win for everyone. We've got to see unity in the working class in order to get socialism....The miners deserve to win, the communities deserve to win. Let's make sure that they do. Victory to the miners. 1. Bail conditions and sentences themselves during the strike have beer particularly severe, with many pickets being told that they must not go within one mile or a few miles of the place where they were arrested on pain of fines or rearrest.
miners' leader, and Tony Benn (the leader of the Labour Party's left wing) were there along with other men, marching at the back!
It is no coincidence that the NUM delegate at the 1984 Labour Party conference spoke in favour of changes in the Labour Party's constitution to allow positive discrimination for women inside the party. The NUM was the only major industrial union to support the women's demands. If the women's demands that five seats on the Labour Party's ruling body (the NEC) be reserved solely for women are met, it is likely that the NEC would go suddenly to the left. The demand thus threatens the current Labour Party leadership in a rather dramatic way. This is, of course, the same Labour Party leadership that is currently trying to sell the miners' strike down the river. The link between the miners' struggle and the struggle of women here is obvious. The miners' wives actions have highlighted this. ed this.
But if these women's example is really to take firm roots in the British and, indeed, in the international women's movement, it is important that the miner's wives groups do not simply disappear as quickly as they have come.
Kay Sutcliffe explained that in Kent some members of her group had been discussing this: "This is something we were talking about the other night. Whether we will stay as a women's group, or whether we will affiliate to the Labour Party, because the Labour Party would like us to work with them. But I think that the women themselves would work better being independent, and maybe joining the Labour Party if they wanted as individuals....There are a lot of women joining the Labour Party already?
But it seems that whatever happens these women will not be simply returning to the kitchen sink'. Betty Heathfield is a member of the national women's coordinating group that has been set up out of the strike and she ex- been set up out or the strike and she explained that 'No union or strike will ever be the same again. Now we need to get the wives of dockers, railway workers and lorry drivers involved. We've got a national coordinating effort underway now because during the strike women have changed a lot... we have become political animals...'
Through their actions, the miners' wives galvanised the British women's movement and have become a vital component of its future. The role that they have mapped out for women within the struggle for jobs and against austerity is one that may be copied elsewhere.
In so doing, they have helped to raise the voice of feminism and feminist demands within the Labour movement, and will hopefully continue to do so. But perhaps the most important thing they have achieved is to show that today the labour and trade-union movement cannot fight the capitalist class alone — a strong and independent women's movement is not a side issue but a decisive one in the battles ahead. 16
BOLIVIA