9 Articles by:
Emily Ingram is a freelance journalist based in Doncaster. She is currently working with Heritage Doncaster to uncover the story of the Women Against Pit Closures movement during the miners' strike of 1984-85.
40 years ago this week, an army of riot police laid siege to the pit village of Easington to crush its defiant support for the miners’ strike. Four decades on from Thatcher’s assault, their community still bears the scars.
Against Thatcher’s plans to starve the miners back to work, the political and physical sustenance of the miners’ strike was wholly dependent on the skills and determination of thousands of working-class women.
Pigeon racing was once understood as a pastime of the elite, but in the twentieth century it established firm roots in Britain’s mining communities – and the bird became known as ‘the poor man’s racehorse’.
Amid the struggles of the the 1970s, radical filmmaking group cinema action brought the fight for working-class liberation to screens in trade union halls and work canteens across the country.
When a shoe factory in the small Norfolk town of Fakenham was slated for closure in 1972, its women workers barricaded themselves inside and began a work-in. 50 years later, their struggle should be remembered.
50 years ago this week, tens of thousands of workers turned out to picket the Nechells gas works in Birmingham, turning the tide of the 1972 strike and securing victory for the miners.
Fifty years ago today, miners across Britain walked out on strike in a landmark dispute that popularised the flying picket. We speak to striking workers about their memories on the frontline.
When it comes to telling the story of the labour movement, women have too often been an after-thought – we take a look at five documentaries which buck the trend by putting Britain’s working-class women to the fore.
In January 1993, women from mining communities set up camps at seven mines facing closure. After a year-long struggle, the pits closed – but not before the camps united supporters around the country.