19.02.2015
Learning the lessons
Women were central to the struggle in the miners' Great Strike, says Mark Fischer
Our last two reprints from The Leninist’s coverage of the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85 have underlined the desperate straits the dispute found itself in by the early months of 1985.1 However, this interview with Mari Collins, Margaret Densham and Kay Sutcliffe - all leading activists from Women Against Pit Closures in Kent - underlines that amongst the very best of the militants the dogged determination that had sustained the strike through 10 hard months still held solid. In addition to their magnificent fighting spirit, these militants recognised the necessity of spreading the lessons they had learned to other proletarian women. In this, they gave genuine substance to the call of The Leninist - the forerunner of the Weekly Worker - for a mass working class women’s movement to be one of the lasting achievements of the miners’ Great Strike.
Mark Fischer
mark.fischer@weeklyworker.co.uk
Kent women: organising and still fighting
Has the fact that you are women made any difference to the police’s treatment of you? Have they been less violent with you than the men?
Mari Collins: I don’t think it’s made any difference whatsoever to the police. The police are just as violent with the women and children as they are with the men. We had an incident in our village about two or three weeks ago where there was a small girl, aged six, knocked to the ground. We also had a little laddie hit on the side of the face. And this was done by the police.
Margaret Densham: Down at Snowdown2 last week some young students had come to support us on the picket line. There was a bit of a push and this policeman got this girl and pulled her down to the floor by the hair. She fell to the ground, so she made a complaint about it ...
Kay Sutcliffe: He actually punched her in the face.
So it’s made no difference at all?
KS: I think it did at first. I think they were very, very wary. We went down to Wivenhoe docks to picket - there was about 18 of us. It was quite early on in the strike and the police didn’t know what to do with us. They surrounded us, but wouldn’t touch us. They told us to move on, but they were very, very wary ...
MD: We get young girls at night-time - you know, kids, 16, 17 years old maybe, down to the discos and they’re on their way home. They shout from the police cars, “Hello, love, you been on the game tonight to get some money for your dad?” And to kids they’re saying that too.
MC: They say anything they like to you and they get away with it. Yet if one of our men sticks their two fingers up, the police are straight over at them ...
MD:Down in Snowdown we’ve been told that there’s got to be no violence because of the simple reason that the National Union of Mineworkers cannot afford the fines. And also if they take 10 men in, that’s 10 men less the next day to be on the picket line. That’s what they’re saying. The scabs are going in, but they are not doing anything: they’re not even producing a bucket of coal. All they’re doing is having a cup of tea and doing some painting jobs. So why spend NUM money on men that are not even producing any coal? So we just keep a low profile and stand in protest and leave it at that.
KS:I’ll tell you another thing I think is important. They keep saying that we should have had a national ballot, that a lot of the miners don’t want to be on strike. But we’ve got men on our picket station that actually voted against the strike, even though the strike call was carried. But they’re the first ones on the picket line because they can now see what is going on. They think now that the union is right to carry on this action. So all this stuff about the men not wanting to be on strike is wrong. Maybe they didn’t in the beginning, but there are more now want to be on strike than there actually were at the beginning.
MC:Every day is making them more determined now.
Has there been a change in attitudes during the course of the strike due to the women’s militant role?
KS:Yes, definitely. I think when we first started our activities in this strike, the men were all for it. They didn’t realise we meant what we were doing.
MC:I don’t think they realised how far we could go.
KS:I don’t think they realised we had such organising qualities really, and I think they’re proud of us and glad that we’ve done it.
MD:I’ll tell you what it’s done for me: before the strike I didn’t know the meaning of left and right. I know I’m definitely bloody left now! I wasn’t politically minded, you see? They’ll find out which way I am now.
MC:I think there were very few women that were really very politically aware and, as the strike has gone on, they have become aware. I’ve noticed this in our village. We’re only a small group and the women never used to speak about politics. In fact in one of our first meetings I was told to keep politics out of the strike. But now you can’t go to a meeting without people saying that the strike is political, it was made political by Thatcher. They’re not even just talking about the miners’ strike any more. They’re going further and talking about other issues.
KS:I think that’s true. Issues that have been in the news like the Greater London Council3, GCHQ, all these other different things that have gone on - it probably wouldn’t even have got a mention before, but now people are talking about it all the time because they understand that it is related to us.
MC:I think in a way Thatcher actually mobilised a lot of women against her when she decided that they were going to cut the social security benefits of strikers and their families.
MD: She thought that the women would say to the men, ‘Please go back to work. We’re desperate.’
MC:And then she found out that people were not going to do that and because kids were starving we had to go out onto the streets and organise collections. But after that we realised that we had to get out to the meetings and speak and let people know exactly what was happening in the strike to counteract the bad press.
KS:And I think it’s made more of an impression coming from a woman rather than a miner standing up at a meeting, because it was something that was completely different to what had been witnessed before, and I think that a lot of response has come from the fact that it’s been miners’ wives on the platform ... I think a lot of people got a shock when a miner’s wife stood on the platform and gave a political speech. They thought it was all going to be ‘Oh, we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, we’ve got no money, we can’t do this and we can’t do that’ - you know. And now we’ve all done it - we’ve all gone out and given a political speech, and involved other issues.
MD:We don’t watch Crossroads4 now: we watch World in action, Panorama - you name it. We’ve forgotten all about Coronation Street now.
Will the women’s organisation continue after the strike?
MC: The answer to that has got to be yes, because we’ve laid the foundations for a national women’s organisation. We have got to build the links between the women’s groups and the Kent Trade Union Alliance, because there’s no place that women can actually go to have a base to fight from. The men or women in the trade union movement have got the trade councils or whatever and they’re supposed to use them to their advantage. We’ve got nothing. But, now that the organisation of the Kent Trade Union Alliance has started up, I think we have got to affiliate to that. We’ve got to encourage the unemployed people to affiliate and all the other support groups, so that we’ve got a base, and everyone in Kent, whether you be employed or unemployed, or man or woman, can fight within that organisation for the good of the Kent community.
KS:I think what is important as well is that, with all the other groups that have been supporting us and the actions they’ve taken in support of our cause, we’ve been able to understand all the harassment that has gone on before and all the police activity, especially against the gays and the lesbians and the black communities in particular and the people in Ireland. This was something we didn’t really associate with before - we didn’t really consider it. But now we’ve got a basis of a group that - OK - at the moment is a miners’ support group, but after the strike we are prepared now to go out, organise and campaign for these other groups, and give our support and relate our experiences inthem.
MC:I think what we’ve got to do is to get into as many places as we can and encourage as many people as we can to come out and join in and start up their own groups ... I think we’ve also got to encourage other housewives to come out - we’ve got to get to these people.
KS: I think what we ought to be doing as well is looking at the wives of other trade unionists and I feel sorry that we didn’t contact the wives of the British Leyland workers when they had their industrial dispute, and also the dockers. I think we missed our chance there - we should have gone straight in.
MC: I don’t think we’ve missed our chance, because we learn by every mistake we make. We’ve learned for the next time. I think the Cammell Laird5 women set up a women’s group because the miners’ wives had organised themselves in such a way; and I think in any other section of the working class women probably would come to the fore like they have in the miners’ strike, and a little bit of encouragement from people who have already been through it would go a long way to help them.
Notes
1. Weekly Worker February 5 and 12 2015.
2. Snowdown was the deepest mine in the Kent coalfield. The first shaft was sunk there in 1908 and the colliery was finally closed in 1987.
3. The Ken Livingstone-led GLC had a fractious relationship with the Thatcher government. Not simply because of its relatively high spending policies, such as using government subsidies to reduce tube and bus fares, but also some high-profile political initiatives calculated to infuriate No10 (ironically, these included meeting Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin and endorsing a statue of Nelson Mandela. How times change …). The GLC was dissolved in 1986 by the London Government Act.
4. Crossroads was a 1964-88 BBC soap opera that became a byword for cheap production values, wobbly sets and (unintentionally) laughable acting. Despite this - or perhaps partially because of this - it attracted audiences of up to 15 million at its peak.
5. Cammell Laird was a famous shipbuilding operation that closed in 1993.