60 years ago: solidarity of
This article appeared in the November 1926 issue of The Worker, the newspaper of the leftwing National Minority Movement, and indicates that the solidarity of women in the mining communities is a tradition going back long before the present strike. DESPITE the array of weapons which have been employed against miners — starvation, police persecution, the entire capitalist Press, the deteatist tactics of the Labour and Trade Union leadership, waverings and weakness within the M.F.G.B. Executive and Associations — the rank and file have remained staunch to their decision of May 1 to hold the pass at whatever cost.
Notwithstanding the realisation that all the so-called Left Wingers on the General Council (of whom they pected so much - are but broken reeds, and that they have wholehearted support trom any of ficial bodies except the Communist Party and the National Movement, they have not succumbed to the temptation to give up the Herculean struggle.
How has this triumph of class solidarity and loyalty been achieved?
To no small extent it is due to the fact that the
miners wives have stood shoulder to shoulder with their men; that they have realised with perfect clearness what the fight is all about, and what exactly a surrender will mean to them in terms of bread and margarine, clothing and boots.
In past struggles, the woman's part has been to sutter in silence at home, ignorant of causes or effects, resentful of apparently unnecesary suffering, and expressing that resentment her husband back to work.
This struggle has changed all that.
The attendance of women at the great mass meetings, at which miners' case has been put in all the mining areas has been remarkable.
So has the efficient way in which they have organised the communal fees for the distribution of clothinghe kitchens, and formed relief commit-
More amazing still has been calm and determined way in which they have tackled the problem of the blacklegs.
In countless cases, they have been the prime movers and participants in demonstrations against Hundreds of miners' wives have been miners' wives.
and the
District exno
Minority in actual conflict many have been batoned, many arrested, fined and even imprisoned.
will
They experiences.
Example to All
They are receiving a education and organisation which they have never through actual experience the classnecessity of the wokrers entering into conflict with that anti-working class
State betore our goal can be won.
followed by the women workers and the wives of men in every other industry.
A.S.L.E.&F.
reactionary in the Co-operative Guilds to stem scabs.
SURRENDER spectacle the police, with never forget these practical lessons in wives have tremendously strengthened the power and
Their example is one that must be
What a chance for the N.U.R. and
Women's Guilds to act as a real revolutionary influence in and apathetic
What an opportunity for the women the torrent of class collaboration slowly wresting the Co.
operative Movement out of the hands ot the workers and presenting it as a encouragement does the
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 3, February 1985. Page 8 of these militant women give to all who are taking part in the great campaign to recruit women workers into the Trade Unions.
These miners' wives have been driven by the sheer brutality of the class struggle in the mining industry to adopt their revolutionary attitude. The same intensification of the struggle will surely make itelf felt in every other great industry, as capitalism sinks lower and lower in its decline.
Let us make sure that behind the transport workers, in every branch of workers are employed, there will be found a great army of women, politically educated organised and determined to side by side with their men - as the struggle for power, for the establishment of Socialism.
The Minority Movement is the rallying ground for all the militants in
Trade Union Movement - its ranks are equally open to women in all industries and guilds.
Through its Press, its educational rotinheir ful wieight into the struc gle, and take a real, decisive part in the battle of the working class.