Kay Sutcliffe; Aylesham Miners' Wives Support Group

We formed our Miners' Wives Support Group here in Aylesham at the time of the 1972-74 strike. It was very different to 1984--more of a community support group, not very political. But we kept it together, so when it came to 1984 we already had the basis for a group.

We called a meeting to relaunch the support group after hearing about the miners going back to work in Nottingham. We were expecting maybe ten or 15 women, but we got 50. There were mixed feelings about what we should do, but we decided to go and hold a women's demonstration up there. We went to the local NUM and they said that, as the Kent mines came under the Leicestershire region of the Coal Board, we should demonstrate there. It was one of the first women's demonstrations in the dispute.

I was politically aware before the strike--I read the papers like everyone else--but I wasn't involved in anything. The experience of the strike made me aware of the political situation of other minority groups--the Greenham Common women, people in Ireland, blacks and ethnic minorities. I saw how corrupt society was, and how the police were used against those groups.

A group of the local NUM, including my husband, went to picket the Wivenhoe docks in Colchester to stop coal imports coming in. They were all arrested and put in jail. We had a women's meeting that night, and on the spur of the moment we decided to get in a Dormobile and go down there. There were only about 12 of us, and we weren't even dressed for a demonstration! Some of the women had come to the meeting dressed for a social gathering, not in warm clothes, but we decided that was what we were going to do.

It was the first time we had ever been in a confrontational situation with the police. We couldn't believe how many police there were, and only a handful of us. They threatened to arrest us for walking on the road. We felt very intimidated by them. We were conscious that some of them weren't police--they didn't have police numbers. We knew the state used the military to police the strike.

I'm much more confident and much more involved in local issues today, and I'm more aware of the world political situation. I can give my own view now, whereas at one time I might have just taken my husband's point of view, or wondered whether I was right. It was an eye-opener, not just for me but for everyone involved.

From Issue 283 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published March 2004 Copyright © Socialist Review

Kay Sutcliffe has not registered the poem Coal Not Dole as her own, but is always pleased to know when it has been used. It was John Tams who had the inspiration to set it to 'See amid the winter snow'.