The fire within: Love, links and the legacy of Women Against Pit Closures

The significance of the 1984−1985 British miners’ strike and its legacy for the left can only be properly understood through reference to the significance of informal female activism. Women’s strike activism extended outwards from community into the labour movement, and the non-aligned left, connecting local to national and international networks. In doing so, it made real the links between what appeared at first to be unconnected political struggles linking the political and material concerns of the strike with private and emotional matters. This class-based gendered informal activism has an ongoing legacy within mining communities but has frequently gone unrecognised by both the formal labour movement and academics. The efforts of women activists to sustain community in the years since the strike rests on an emotional commitment to nurture a creative socialist politics based in the realities of everyday life in ex-mining localities that are aligned with trade union and labour movement politics and values. The National Women’s Action for Positive Change was constituted in 2025 to mark the 40th anniversary of the dispute as an inclusive legacy organisation that encompasses strategic political campaigning, community activism, and creative cultural expression, harnessing traditional female skills for political communication and education. The purpose of this new configuration of National Women Against Pit Closures is to link traditional left-wing politics and the informal gendered community politics of class. Women’s organisation during and since the strike offers a practical and principled model of activism located within community action that seeks to galvanise the left and offer a counter to the populist politics of the right.