Author(s): Brett Bodily
Mentor(s): Rebecca de Schweinitz, Keenan White
Institution BYU
On March 3rd, 1984, more than 140,000 miners, all members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), walked out on strike in protest of proposed pit closures. Beginning on March 3rd and over the course of the next 362 days many miners and their communities rallied support and distributed funds, food, and supplies to support what was viewed by many as a fight for survival. The strike included a large cohort of Women, some of whom were stepping into the role of an activist for the first time. Though involvement in politics was nothing new for Welsh women, this unique form of Women’s Liberation differed from our traditional understanding of Women’s liberation and is rooted in a distinctly Welsh version of Labor feminism. Daryl Leeworthy’s work Causes in Common has worked to understand the role of Welsh women in the long Labour movement but does not discuss the novel approaches of the women in 1984. Robert Gildea’s book, Backbone of the Nation examines this moment from a different angle, instead focusing on oral histories from the strike. However, Gildea fails to examine the impact of being Welsh on the women from Wales who involved themselves in the strike. This form of Welsh working woman’s liberation is a defining legacy of the strike and is firmly rooted in time and place. The 1984 strike in Wales signified some of the most important forays into public service for a generation of women, allowing for a novel form of Women’s liberation both distinctly working class, and distinctly Welsh. The eventual defeat of the NUM resulted in a fading of this Welsh form of liberation and has largely been ignored in the years since 1985. This project uses various archival records, oral histories, and secondary sources to define this Welsh Labour Liberation and traces its rise and fall from 1983 through 1986.