Against Pit Closures held in Sheffield, on 17 August, with over seven hundred women present, proves once again the durability and persistance of women who have radicalised during the course of a struggle. Six months after the end of the year-long strike, rebuffed by the NUM conference which voted narrowly against their affiliation to the national union, the women who sustained the strike in a way never seen before, are continuing to organise both at a local and a national level.
Much has been written about the historic nature of the miners' strike, the most important trade union struggle in Britain for sixty years, but perhaps the most significant development is the continuing existence of the WAP movement. The achievement of these women is to begin to break with the political practice of the traditional labour movement in Britain. The history of British imperialism produced the contradictory elements in the labour movement of a very well-organised trade union movement alongside very right-wing politics. This is most clearly the case on issues of gender and 12
The Women Against Pit Closures movement race. In a labour movement which based itself on Britain's imperialist past, sexism and racism are both endemic and structural. As a result the demands for women's liberation and black liberation are seen as a real threat to the status quo (as of course they are!), and even groups on the left, like the Militant, cover up for the bureaucracy by describing these demands as 'divisive' or a 'diversion'. Thus the links made during the
"In their effectiveness during the
strike the women have proved the
importance of autonomous organisation." strike with black groups and the self organisation of the women themselves, are in the long term truly progressive.
In their effectiveness during the strike the women have proved the importance of autonomous organisation. Far from this autonomy reinforcing already existing divisions, it allowed the women to fight simultaneously for their own independence and for the struggle as a whole. As was said more than once during the strike, you could tell which pits had active women's support groups by the state of the men's morale. Contrary to the beliefs of some groups on the left, the fight for women's liberation is not a diversion from the fight for socialism, nor on the other hand, will it be achieved by turning away from the working class and the traditional, if inadequate, organisations of the labour movement.
However, despite their success in organising as women while standing
shoulder to shoulder with the men, not all their demands have been met. Nor in the long term have the problems thrown up by their role in the strike, the fight against sexism and the contradictions produced by the double oppression of women, been resolved.
In the first place the narrow vote against their right to affiliate to the NUM is a real setback. In order to change this, the women will have to confront the political situation within the NUM itself. Since the end of the strike it has become clear that the influential role played by the Communist Party (CP) within the NUM affected not only many of the events during the strike itself, but is continuing to influence the way forward in the difficult period after the defeat, for example the resolutions on amnesty to the TUC and LP Conferences. In their refusal to sever any links with the trade union bureaucracy, the CP are using the cry of 'unity' to water down the demands the NUM need to make on any future Labour government. In many areas the women's support groups have lined up with the most militant sections in the union and as a result are engaged in a fight with the CP and its supporters, often in the leadership of lodges, over the question of amnesty itself, but also over the right of the women to continue to organise independently, to maintain their own bank accounts and to further their links with other women's groups.
The right wing in the union, and the CP too, know that the WAPC rank and file is on the militant left of the union. For example during the strike, until the national demonstration called by the Liaison Committee for Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU), at the very end of the struggle, the only national march was that organised and led by the women on August 11th. After
the end of the strike it was the women who led and continue to lead the demand for amnesty, while the national union was very late in starting an effective campaign. The resistance of the NUM to push the full demands on the grounds that they might jeopardise the election of a future Labour government, is not accepted by many of the women.
What the right have not perhaps yet fully grasped is the reason for the women's inflexibility. This is based on their daily experience of the effects of the sackings and imprisonment, for it is inevitably the women who have to deal with these effects. With men in prison, it is the women who have to cope alone with domestic, family and financial problems: with men unemployed, it falls to the women to sustain the family both economically and emotionally.
In order to make their voice better heard the women are faced with several tasks. First those who are critical of the way the WAPC is at present organised will have to fight to make it more democratic and accountable to the grass roots of the movement. The next conference will be a real test of this. Secondly the 'offer' by Mick McGahey that the Scottish area WAPC could affiliate to the Scottish area NUM, should be pressed and the demand put in other sympathetic areas. Thirdly the links made between the women's support groups and other women organised around other demands, such as the women at Greenham, at Barking hospital, women in the Women's Action Committee, should be built on. The slogan 'Your Fight is Our Fight' should be practically applied.
But there is another, more fundamental area which was highlighted by the development of the movement, an area which has been dealt with inadequately in all the articles and books on the strike. That is the question of the double oppression of women and the role of the family in that oppression. The problems produced by playing a significant political role in the strike, while conti-
nuing to fulfill the demands placed upon them by society as wife and mother, have been experienced by many women during the strike; *A lot of tension has been created by the strike, it's opened up a lot of questions about living in a family, for women it brings it all out. I think we're very lucky in the fact that we have husbands who understand women having independence, but at the same time they still fall back on old-fashioned ideas and say, "You should spend more time with the children." And we do tend to neglect things for what's going on." From a taped interview with women in the support group in Aylesham, Kent. Dec, 1984. The immense solidarity shown during the strike in the mining communities, has led many on the left to ignore the question of the role of women in the family and the sexism that the role engenders. And those that have raised the issue have either done so in a way that fails to link the struggles for women's liberation and socialism, or have concentrated on the issue of sexism alone, which is inadequate to deal with the problem. But the question of the ultimately reactionary role of the family has to be confronted sooner or later, in order to explain, even if it cannot alleviate, the contradictions which women face.
In his book on the question of women and the family, Engels wrote: ..the first condition for the liberation of women is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and ... this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family's attribute of being the economic unit of society.' Despite the over-optimistic and causal link between paid work outside the home with the liberation of women, Engels made the important point that the move of women into the paid workforce, which would encourage collective organisation and trade union consciousness, would be a precondition for the
development of a women's liberation movement. At the same time it would mean that the woman would not be able to fulfill the role of housewife and mother, a role expected of her by society. This led him to believe it would be necessary to abolish the present form of the family!
The importance of these ideas, and others like them, for the development of an autonomous women's liberation movement is clear. The full liberation of women requires a socialist transformation of society. At the same time women now must raise and fight for a combination of social, economic and democratic demands. Not only for equal rights and against all forms of discrimination in jobs, pay and the law, for control over fertility and reproduction and for equal representation, but also we must formulate demands and fight for socialised childcare and towards the socialisation of domestic
The women in the mining communities have experienced what these ideas mean in everyday life, even if that experience has not been fully articulated. The material need for collective childcare, food distribution, preparation and cooking while only one side of their experience, has contributed to their radicalisation. It has given them a foretaste of what a socialist society might achieve. These experiences should be made conscious in order to develop practical demands based on them.
The first steps towards the rebuilding of a mass, autonomous women's liberation movement, but now with strong roots in the working class, have been taken by the formation of the WAPC organisation. It is up to us all to make sure these gains are consolidated. Footnote 1 Trotsky, too, thought that the liberation of women was not possible while the present form of the family remained: "Genuine emancipation of women is inconceivable without a general rise of economy and culture, without the destruction of the petty-bourgeois family unit, without the introduction of socialised food preparation and education." Writings 1937-8. Pathfinder Press.