Women Against Pit Closures: Women and Feminism in the Miners’ Strike, 1984-5 - Festival of Culture

If you’ve seen the film Pride (2014) you’ll know that women’s support groups formed in coalfield communities to help raise money, provide soup kitchens and food parcels to striking miners and their families, and picket and demonstrate in support of the strike. In 2018-19 Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (UCL History) undertook a major oral history project with Dr Victoria Dawson (UCL History) and Dr Natalie Thomlinson (University of Reading) to talk to over 100 women from Scotland, the north east, Yorkshire, South Wales, Nottinghamshire and Kent about what it was like being part of this movement. In this session you’ll hear their own words. In particular, Florence will discuss what they’ve found about how the strike affected women’s views of feminism or ‘Women’s Liberation’.