The Chronicle (South Tyneside and Durham)
Miners’ Strike anniversary to shine light on women’s fight
Women who battled alongside the pitmen to save jobs and communities will ensure that the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike will be a day to remember. TONY HENDERSON reports
ANNIVERSARIES come and go. But there is one which thousands of women are determined will be marked with all the pride and passion they feel it deserves.
It is 40 years since the year-long miners’ strike began, when many women rallied behind the pitmen to save the mines, jobs and communities from the threat of widespread colliery closures.
Women banded together in cramped conditions to cook and serve meals to their hard-pressed communities, made banners, marched, raised funds, stood on picket lines and counselled those who were finding it hard to cope.
Heather Wood, from the pit community of Easington in County Durham, was fully committed to the struggle and 40 years later has been part of the drive to commemorate the strike anniversary with a national day of events in Durham on March 2.
Against a backdrop of bodies such as the National Women Against Pit Closures to local groups like Save Easington Area Mines, the response to the event has wowed organisers.
“So many from all over the country wanted to be part of it ,” says Heather. Women’s groups from the United States and Germany, who forged links with their UK counterparts during the strike, will be represented.
It will aim to ensure that the anniversary does not slip by unmarked.
Heather says: “Before the strike, we knew something was going to happen. Margaret Thatcher was out to get the mines.
“The union was fighting to maintain the mines, the jobs and communities.
“We knew we had to get the support of the women. If we didn’t, the men would have been forced back to work. It was a mass movement of women across the country, and we are still here.
“We will celebrate how strong and resilient the women were. Some of us still can’t believe we did what we did.”
“On March 2, around 300 will gather at the all-ticket main happening in Dunelm House students union hall for speeches, music, film, comedy, poetry and singing.
Musician Joe Solo will perform a song he has written for the occasion.
Twenty banners made by women for the strike will be part of a parade leaving Palace Green at 1pm for Durham Market Place, led by the Riverside Band and involving the Durham Miners Association.
A pop up shop will operate from February 26 at the Prince Bishops shopping centre, selling keepsake greetings cards of the women’s support groups’ banners and badges. “It will recognise what we did and what we can do, and remind young people of their heritage,” says Heather..
The day will rekindle memories of 1984-85. Heather says: “It was a tough time trying to keep a home going with no money.
“But my forebears were all miners. The strike was about jobs, and whether our communities would survive or die.
“We knew we had to fight.” Heather’s mother came out of retirement as a school cook to make tray upon tray of pies. The women took over the small kitchen of Easington Colliery Club and at peak times were serving up to a thousand meals, five days a week, as well as preparing food parcels.
“We weren’t just serving meals. We were helping each other through it and counselling those who were at their wits’ end,” says Heather.
The focus was on the conviction that it was the communities, with the mine at their centre, which were at stake.
Heather says: “You don’t realise when you are small just how lucky you are to be brought up in a mining community,
“You knew everybody. The community was a bigger, wider family,
“The men depended on each other underground, and the women had the same network above ground.”
Heather is one of many individuals featured in a new film in which they reveal what it was like to live and work in pit communities, the mining culture and the strike. Hollowed Ground: The Peo
ple of the Durham Coalfield, is by County Durham-based Lonely Tower Film & Media and is directed by Mark Thorburn and produced by Marie Gardiner.
Heather tells of how during the strike she walked past the village green with her children.
“Instead of being green it was black with police in uniform.
“The village always felt like a place where you were safe, but this was terrifying.
“It was like a war zone, with police filling the streets, on horseback in cars and buses – an arm of the state.”
The idea for the film was originally prompted by the then upcoming 30th anniversary of the closure last December of Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland – the last deep mine in the old county of Durham.
Marie says: “At a time when we are seeing working class people continuously falling through gaps in policy, it feels more necessary than ever to highlight the struggles, and more importantly the resilience of communities like those in Hollowed Ground.”
In the 19th century, County Durham’s population increased steeply, as families arrived in search of work and pit towns and villages forged their own unique identity.
“Interwoven in the fabric of this, is community, and an unwavering resilience in the face of adversity,” says Mark.
“It is our hope that this film will help those from both within and outside the North East, to understand the modern face of the region; by exploring the roots, challenges and experiences of those that lived and still live in our pit communities.
“Coal brought enormous wealth to the nation. Times have now moved on; but the communities that helped to build that wealth have been repeatedly failed.
“The film tells the people’s story – in their own words. It is an honest portrayal of community, struggle, solidarity and evolution.”
The film portrays the Durham Miners Gala, which each year attracts around 200,000 observers and participants, although the pits and virtually all traces of the once widespread mining industry in the county have gone.
“The further the pits get from living memory, the more the gala and its sense of pride goes from strength to strength,” says Mark
Perhaps, he thinks, “it is about an attitude forged by communities which came out of hard work, hardship, and a long fight for decent pay and conditions.
“The film isn’t rose-tinted but at its showings people have watched in tears. The response has been phenomenal.”
It may be that the emotional bond is linked to the lack of significant physical evidence of centuries of mining and its culture.
“It has been said that then evidence was razed from the landscape with indecent haste, as if to forget that it ever happened,” says Mark.”
“But the pride in the culture remains and the Gala is where the baton is being passed on, with our film also being a small part of that.” Metal sculptor Ray Lonsdale has created several works for County Durham communities which commemorate their mining heritage.
Ray, who lives in South Hetton, says: “A lot of the work I do is sponsored by community groups who raise funds.
“What I liked about the pits was that there was a job for everyone. People had their dignity on the back of that.
“There was something for everyone to earn a living.
“All that is gone and that is very sad.”
Film director Ken Loach is another Hollow Ground contributor. He says: The North East is founded on a long history of struggle.
The old industries of shipbuilding, steel and coal may have gone, but in many places nothing has been put in their place, so communities have been abandoned
“Of course, people are angry and bitter. But we saw the old tradition of solidarity in the strike.
“It is important that the spirit of solidarity wins over the bitterness and anger that people feel, with justification.”
The film is available to buy on DVD on Amazon and streamed via Amazon Prime. There will be public showings at People’s Bookshop, Durham at 7pm on Wednesday; Ryhope Community Centre at 1pm on February 13; and Wheatley House, Wheatley at 11am on February 21.