2. The Evolution of Women's Roles in the Coalfields
2.2 Coal-mining and the pit-village
2.2.1. Mining - male or female?
2.2.2.2 Economic predominance of mining
2.2.2.4 The leisure activities
2.3 Women's roles in mining-communities before 1984/85
2.3.6 Masculinity and muscularity
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This chapter will try to illustrate the evolution of the roles women in the coalfields have played until the Miners' Strike 1984/85. It will try to find the material and social basis for these roles. For a deeper understanding "it is necessary to interpret how divisions between women and men in mining communities exist materially at home, in the workplace and in the community. For these divisions reproduce ideologies, which in turn reinforce the existing divisions." (S. Miller: 357). The home (and family ), the workplace and the community are the cornerstones of this chapter, the colliery, as will be shown, determining their character completely. It also shaped women's roles, the reasons will be explained.
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2. 2. 1. Mining - male or female ?
"Today all Britain's coal-miners are men. The only women to be seen at a colliery are the canteen staff, office cleaners and secretaries. [. . . ] No woman can be employed as a miner underground. The ban does not include work done above ground but no women now work with coal on the surface [ . . . ] either. This has not always been so." (A. John, 1984: 1). In the early drift mines in Britain, mere holes dug into hills or river banks, as well as in the later shafts, sunk from the fifteenth century onward, families worked together, men as well as women and children. Almost from the beginning of coal-mining men and women had different tasks in the mines with the men usually cutting the coal and the women transporting it. Britain's demand for coal inreased from the Elizabethan age when people began to burn coal in their home fires instead of wood, until production reached its peak in 1913. Coal, or 'King Coal' as it is often called, was Britain's largest and most important industry. New industries, such as glassmaking, smelting of iron, etc. used coal. "The introduction of steam machinery, the development of the railways and inventions such as gas street lighting all pointed towards coal mining being one of the biggest growth industries of the nineteenth century." (A. John, 1984: 4). In Victorian times Britain supplied about 80% of the world's coal! In its peak year 1913 Britain's coal industry produced a quarter of the world's coal supplies at more than 3,000 pits. One and a quarter million men formed the workforce of the industry when there was a total working population of about 19 million. "In mining areas the proportion was, of course, much higher. In Northumberland in 1911 one in five of the working population was a miner, and in Durham almost one in three." (Pollard: 18). These numbers give an impression of the position coal mining had in Britain and also illustrate the coal industry's influence on the culture and on local and national politics.
It is a commonly held view today that coal mining is, and always was, a completely male industry. Only recently have historians and social scientists illuminated women's roles in the industry (cf. : A. John, 1976, 1980, 1982, 1984). According to them the history of coal mining in Britain is as much the history of men as it is of women. Women were unlucky insofar as the image of mining and miners was already distorted when historians began to examine the history of coal mining. It was distorted mainly because women had been excluded from the industry early in the nineteenth century. This not only put the women out of sight but it also was the basis for the roles women in the coalfields played and still play.
It was mechanisation which started the process of excluding women from the industry. "'Earlier English Commonwealth did actually embrace men/women as a whole, because families were self -contained and necessary to the state, but the mechanical state which replaced it, and where development has accompanied the extension of capitalism, has regarded the individual as the unit not the family'." (A. Clark: 14; quoted in: Holderness: 13). This was bound "to exite struggle on two fronts between capital and labour and between men and women for control over the new labour process." (B. Campbell, 1986: 257). The men were aided in their struggle by the capitalists whose long-term interest, apart from the short-term interest of extracting as much surplus value from the individual as possible, was to secure the labour capacity for the future. "Thus not only protective legislation against the exhaustion of human body and mind at work, but public health measures, national education, and various efforts to protect small children from neglect were introduced." (S. Rowbotham: 59). In this situation criticism of the female mineworkers developed: Women's work underground was criticised on three major grounds:
The work the women did was dangerous and physically injurious:
Angela John points out (A. John, 1976: 2) that the middle class commentators probably knew little about the actual working and living conditions of the women. It is interesting to note that the same working conditions led to different conclusions: men were admired and glorified because they resisted danger, fought against nature, etc. but the women were to be banned from the mines.
Working underground was immoral:
Women's place was in the home, not working was respectable, working would lead to a loss of self respect "but also caused their husband's downfall." (A. John, 1976: 3).
Women were cheap labour:
Men feared that the employers would prefer women as employees. But instead of raising women's wages they were replaced by men, as was to be expected in the view of the aim to exclude women from the industry.
With the Children's Employment Commission which was appointed in 1841 to investigate the working conditions for children in factories and mines, this criticism came into public view. The Commissioners found the working conditions underground appalling and therefore "they decided to include adult women in their reports." (A. John, 1984: 9). Working conditions were very bad indeed and the replacement of women and children, who usually did haulage work, by pit ponies indicate this. Women actually did not like to work in the mines but as they needed some kind of employment and the mining village offered no other they usually had no alternative. The Commission, and with them most middle- and upper class people did not see this. They blamed the women for neglecting their children and "for being bad housekeepers, not asking how women could keep a house when they worked sixteen hours and earned so little money they had nothing to keep it with." (S. Rowbotham: 58). The result of the commission's work was the Mines and Collieries Act, passed on 10 August 1842, which banned "all children under 10 and females of any age from working underground" (A. John,1984: 41). Women continued, however, to work on the surface on coal preparation but colliery closures, further mechanisation and replacement by men drove out pit women . "The last two women screen workers were made redundant at Whitehaven [Cumbria] in 1972, 130 years after females had been forbidden to work below ground." (A. John, 1976: 14).
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In his study "Sociological Models of the Mining Community" (M. Bulmer, 1975) Martin Bulmer argues that mining communities all over the world generally have several main characteristics. These characteristics are:
1. Physical isolation of the community
2. Economic predominance of mining in the community
3. The nature of work in the pit
4. A special kind of leisure activities
5. The family
All of these characteristics are more or less interrelated but the overall factor which shaped the whole community is the colliery itself, as will become clear in the following description of the ideal-type of a British mining community of after 1842.
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Coal-mining necessitates the location of the pit "at the point of extraction in the mineral field." (M. Bulmer, 1975: 85). The coalfields were often situated in remote and underdeveloped parts of the country which led to a minimal contact with the outside world. This meant almost complete physical and social isolation, reinforced by the fact that the work itself was literally hidden from view as it was carried out below ground. Despite the great importance of coal and coal-mining for the nation's wealth and power, the miners and their work was usually ignored. Their "exclusiveness and remoteness made colliers a source of terror, though not wonder, to the 'respectable' population" (M. Pollard: 15). The report of a government inspector about the north-east of England is very revealing:
"'The erection of long rows of unpicturesque cottages, the arrival of wagons piled with ill assorted furniture, the immediate importation of the very scum and offscouring of a peculiar, mischievous and unlettered race, the novelties introduced with almost fabled rapidity into the external features of the country, dense clouds of rolling smoke, the endless clatter of endless strings of coal wagons, the baleful colour imparted to the district, are surely sufficient to untenant the seats of the wealthy, and untenanted do they speedily become. The arrival of the pitmen is the sign for the departure of the gentry, and henceforward few indeed visit that district but they who traffic with the coals or the colliers. '" (M. Pollard: 19).
Isolated communities "have their own codes , myths, heroes, and social standards. There are few neutrals in them to mediate the conflicts and dilute the mass." (C. Kerr / A. Siegel: 191). Martin Bulmer proposes to replace the term 'isolated mass', which is usually used in this context, by the term 'occupational community'. In his opinion "the 'isolated mass' hypothesis [is] [. . . ] an oversimplified view of the social structure of mining communities." (M. Bulmer, 1975: 71). Unlike the term 'isolated mass' 'occupational community' includes a certain degree of voluntarity. "The three defining characteristics of an occupational community [in this view] are that its members see themselves in terms of their occupational roles; members of occupational communities share a reference group composed of the occupational community; and members associate with, and make friends of, other members, and so carry work activities and interests into their non work lives. The development of an occupational self-image is important because the value systems held by members of an occupation are frequently relevant not only to the worlds of work but to many other aspects of members' lives. " (M. Bulmer, 1975: 80).
As has been shown half of the members of these communities is excluded from the work that determined their lives for about 150 years. "Yet although employment prospects for women in mining areas have never been good, they are nevertheless better than in the past (although much work is part-time). Since 1945, improved communications have helped to break down both the isolation and community spirit for which mining areas have been so renowned." (A. John, 1986: 93). This isolation of the mining-communities had far-reaching consequences for their members: A strong feeling of being connected with the community developed. "So there was this insularity and isolation and one became terrible attached to one's village and there was little marrying out - I've noticed that. [. . . ] husbands and wives generally came from the same village, if not, from not very far away. There was very little cross-breeding." (S. Chaplin, 1972: 6). Mining-communities developed their own customs, "'they have thus acquired habits and ideas peculiar to themselves; even their amusements are hereditary and peculiar(J. R. Leifchild: 197; quoted in L. Fish, Vol. I: 10). The isolation as well as close family ties confirmed and strengthened the culture and the ideologies of the mining communities.
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The colliery determined life in the community: it was its economic basis. "Mining jobs represented a community resource; they were the basis of community life in the Easington District. The jobs were, in a sense, 'everyone's' as were the pits; nationalised 'on behalf of the people'." (H. Beynon, 1984: 108).
In County Durham were employed in coal-mining:
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These numbers, however, include all communities in County Durham which were not mining communities, for example the administrative and University town of Durham City. Typically more than 2/3 of the male population in mining areas were miners - even in 1984: "In the Easington District fifty per cent of all male jobs are in the pits." (H. Beynon, 1984: 105). The mine owners not only provided the jobs but also a conciderable number of houses for the miners - in 1925 for example they provided 49,000 houses in the Durham coalfield (with a total workforce of 147,000 miners there), the rent was regarded as part of the miners' wages. Providing these colliery houses was not just humanitarian - it offered considerable advantages to the mine owners:
"Such settlements were a great inducement to recruitment and represented a considerable improvement on previous housing e. g. farm labourers cottages. Also colliery villages created a ready supply of labour when extra people were needed villages were isolated by nature and occupation so people often had no other choice than try to obtain work at the pit. Another advantage (for the colliery owners) that such proximity enabled men to be worked longer hours and ensured punctual attendance. The colliery company truly controlled access to work housing and retail credit all of which depended on having a job and working hard enough to keep it." (K. Armstrong / D. F. Wilson: 3).
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Coal-mining and quarrying were, after deep-sea diving, the industries in Great Britain with the highest accident rates and with most fatal accidents. The danger of the job is one of the outstanding characteristics of coal-mining and despite numerous safety precautions this is true even today! The process of extracting coal under most adverse conditions (in great depths, in low and often wet seams, with the permanent danger of explosions or roof-falls, etc. ) was at the same time dangerous and physically as well as mentally extraordinarily exerting, mechanisation only gradually setting in because of the geological conditions underground.
Geological and ecomomic conditions determined the working conditions in the mines, therefore regional differences existed: "In Yorkshire, the North East, Lancashire and South Wales a combination of adverse geological conditions and rapid industrial expansion combined at different periods to increase the number of major disasters far above the national average. There were the 'gasey' seams in Northumberland, Durham and Lancashire" (J. Benson: 41).
Physical strength, courage and skill were necessary for mine-work, qualities which evoked admiration for the mineworkers. In 1911 Winston Churchill told the British Parliament his opinion of the miners:
"A large modern colliery, with its intensive and carefully elaborated equipment, including the various appliances for getting the coal and bringing it to the surface of the ground, or transmitting power through long distances underground, or causing great volumes of air to flow through confined passages many miles in length, or draining wide areas underground and raising water to the surface, or sorting the coal into various sizes, separating it from the intermingled dirt; that spectacle, as has been said, is one of the most remarkable specimens of human activitiy in its struggle with and over matter. '" (quoted in G. L. Atkinson: 19).
Beatrice Campbell gives this explanation for the admiration of miners: "Miners are men's love object. They bring together all the necessary elements of romance. Life itself is endangered, their enemy is the elements, their tragedy derives from forces greater than they, forces of nature and vengeful acts of God. That makes them victim and hero at the same time, which makes them irresistable - they command both protection and admiration." (B. Campbell, 1984(2): 97). The mineworker, meanwhile exclusively of the male sex, was glorified, his life and work were equally idealized (cf. some of the novels of D. H. Lawrence or George Orwell). Praise, admiration and glorification were very effective means to appreciate the work of the miners on the one hand (after all Great Britain's power and wealth was based essentially on coal!) and on the other hand to dissociate oneself from it because nobody else really wanted to do this dirty and dangerous job or expected their children to do it. The dangers of the pit and the admiration the miners experienced could not remain without consequences on the miners themselves and their families.
In the narrow and often remote seams the miners worked in small groups, usually responsible for themselves and little controlled by supervisors or employers. Work, wages and even the survival of the individual depended very much on a good cooperation with the work mates, more than in any other industry. "The miner is always dependent on others, and the workers underground must function as an efficient team. Cooperation is essential, not only for productivity, but often also for survival. [. . . ] This cooperation is also found above ground; the mining community learned through a long series of strikes and lockouts that it must be united to survive." (L. Fish, Vol. I: 19). Solidarity, cooperation and group-orientation as well as occupational and physical skills were therefore indispensible for the mining communities. Although these characteristics were seen as relating exclusively to the male members of the mining communities the women knew of the importance these characteristics had on their own existence and future. Therefore they did not openly oppose the obvious overrating of the men. The working conditions having remained more or less the same until some decades ago hardly anything changed in this field: "Despite great acceleration in production, the opening of new pits and the deepening of existing shafts, the work of the man on the coal face remained very much the same as it had been for centuries, and it is only in very recent years that machinery has replaced the pick and shovel." (L. Fish, Vol. I: 16).
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The three characteristics talked about so far of the mining communities had a strong influence on the leisure activities of miners and their families. Men's domination was reflected in the leisure: "Recreation has largely been defined in terms of male expectations and opportunities which have meant that women's use of their free time has been dismissed as frivolous or unimportant." (A. John, 1982: 18). Frequently miners working together also spent their free time together which again reinforced the influence pit-work had on the miners' values. "Since the social relationships of work overlap with those of residence and leisure, pit work carries over into leisure time." (M. Bulmer, 1978 c: 26). Even the kind of leisure activities was determined by the character of work: "The pattern of leisure in mining is dominated by insecurity, which stems in part from the dangers of death, disablement or injury in the work of a miner." (M. Bulmer, 1978 c: 31). Miners preferred sports and other competitive activities (leek-growing for instance was very popular in the North East of England and there were prizes given for the products). The elements of strength, staying power and skill at work may have had an influence on these kinds of leisure activities.
The most important leisure activity probably was to go to a pub or to a Working Men's Club. Here the element of danger and insecurity may have had a strong influence: Always to live in danger of injury or even death must have fostered a leisure time organization which was oriented at "enjoying oneself in the present". (M. Bulmer, 1978 c: 31). The importance drinking, sports or the 'Club' had shows that the offers the community made for the leisure time of its members were exclusively oriented at the men.
In the North East of England the Working Men's Club often was the centre of community life. It was a meeting place for workmates, neighbours, relatives or friends. But: "The Club is primarily a male preserve - in some, women cannot be members, only guests - and in most the attendance of wives would be limited to the weekend concert." (M. Bulmer, 1978 c: 32). Mrs. Whitehall said about the Club: "'My husband was a club man, you see, he liked to go to the club, but most women didn't like that. I would never go, it wasn't nice.'" (Whitehall: 11).
Most of the other facilities (such as pubs, institutes, reading rooms, libraries, brass bands, the allotments, theatres, cinemas or playing fields (cf. J. Benson: 142-163)) were almost exclusively used by men - if they were available at all! F. H. Smith from the Rhondda Valley said: "In our village we have nothing for recreation, except a picture palace, the British Legion (men's and women's sections), and unfinished playing fields." (F. H. Smith: 71).
Available and, which was very important, accessible to women were facilities of Church and Chapel. "Our only relaxation was on Sunday where we all turned out to Chapel and Sunday School. It was a pleasure to see the miners and their families in their Sunday best." (E. Andrews: 3-4). The church presented itself as a centre for women's activities and it was used as such. Especially the social aspect meant much to the women: "Faith was undoubtedly important to them, but so was the social side of the Chapel and for many of them, their only sources of entertainment were penny readings, Sunday school anniversaries or [. . . ] singing festivals" (R. Crook: 40).
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In hardly any other industry the character of work determined family life as much as in coal-mining. It was not only the large number of accidents which in single-industry communities (which the mining -communities in Northumberland and Durham frequently were) left "'a company of aged men, weak women, and helpless children'." (G. Parkinson: 42) but daily routine which influenced families most. "The pit intruded everywhere. Even if he should be lucky enough to avoid serious injury and crippling disease, the miner and those around him had to learn to live with his tiredness, his aches and pains, his ruptures and his rheumatism." (J. Benson: 113). Especially shift work had very serious concequences for the families: Regardless of the shift the miner worked on he always expected his breakfast and his bait prepared and a hot meal at the end of his shift as well as a hot bath. In a mining family with not just the father being a miner but also the sons and maybe even a lodger the women of this family had to do these jobs at all times of the day. "The economic and work organisation of the pit imposed a corresponding cycle of cooking, washing and household demands." (A. John, 1982: 18).
Apart from caring for the miners, family had another function directly connected with mine-work: In the long run it provided a sufficient number of workers for the industry. On behalf of the risks and hardness of mine-work it certainly was to the coal-industry's advantage if the children in mining communities were socialized in its way. "Relatively few men who are strangers to mining want to endure its risks voluntarily. Only those who grow up in the environment of mining, for whom the costs are an everyday feature, become immune to them. The mining family, therefore, serves to perpetuate the mining industry. Anything then which destroys mining families is creating problems for the future of the industry." (V. Allen, 1981: 84). It is not surprising then, that women were kept as the centre of the families: Even if there had been jobs for women in mining communities, to work would have been morally offensive: "The working-class wife was not supposed to work, at least outside the home. To do so would offend her husband's manhood, for it would demonstrate his inability to provide for her. It was firmly established in working-class culture that only the sick or the depraved sent their wives out to work, and indeed outside the textile towns only women whose husbands were ill or injured or drunkards or otherwise unemployable normally worked." (P. N. Stearns: 113).
The employers also tried to strengthen women's position in the family: Single miners were not entitled to colliery houses. The status of marriage and family was raised and for a long time miners married earlier than any other occupational group!
The family was seen as the basic social and economic unit "and the distinctive economic role of the wife was to service the existing work force and produce the next generation of workers. In return for this 'vital work' husbands had a moral and legal duty to provide their wives with the means of subsistence." (H. Land: 109-110).
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As should be clear by now the mining communities as well as the people living in them were shaped by the collieries. Apart from the features of mining communities mentioned so far there are some more which shaped women's roles. The communal sense in mining communities, produced by isolation and reinforced by the dangers of work led the miners to organise. Therefore the mining unions (the MFGB and later the NUM) for many decades were the strongest unions in Great Britain.
"Under these cicumstances, working people in the colliery villages developed their own political and social institutions and relationships to try to cushion the worst effects of living there and to counter the power of the colliery owners. Politically, development centered around the emergence of trade unions and the emerging Labour Party. [. . . ] Socially the villagers developed a system of mutual help since for working people in the colliery village there was no option but to help themselves. In this sense, then, the necessary co-operation of miners working underground and the close ties of friendship and trust that this engendered spilled over into life outside the pit." (K. Armstrong/ D. Wilson: 4).
Solidarity and mutual help not only existed among the miners but in the entire community. A voice from South Hetton: "'People, if they didn't help each other, it was a bad job, they had to help each other because they depended upon help themselves sometime. '" (D. Wilson: 47). After all women were isolated as well and an accident in the pit could always deprive them of their husbands, their maintenance and even of their homes (for a long time widows were not entitled to living in colliery -owned houses!). "Women live with the drama and danger of the pits, they live their solidarity with the pitmen." (B. Campbell, 1984: 102). "In that visceral fight for survival [against employers and against geological forces] the miners had their community wrapped around them. Throughout the nineteenth century the history of the industry was also the history of the communities." (B. Campbell, 1986: 256).
This community spirit and solidarity are alive even today (despite numerous opposite voices (cf. F. Atkinson: 96)) as the recent miners' stike has shown very vividly.
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2. 3. 1 Introduction
As already indicated the collieries and the work therein influenced the roles of the people in mining communities, men as well as women. It is not easy to separate the aspects to be dealt with in this chapter and overlaps can hardly be avoided. The following statement by Sid Chaplin, a former mineworker from the North East, touches on a number of these aspects: "For some - amongst whom must be included the women - being born in a pit village must have meant lifelong suffering and frustration. It must have seemed a prison. For many it offered most of the things men seek - identity, the recognition of their peers (what else is there to seek?), a place, carefully defined boundaries, richness in work and leisure." (S. Chaplin, 1972: 27). The prison character of the mining community points at the isolation of the community but also at the isolation from social and economic resources, at missing possibilities for self-realization. (e. g. 'frustration' and 'suffering'). The mining community offered the men what it denied the women: Identity, appreciation (e. g. in political organisations), taking part in community life (women were bound to the home), fulfilment in work and in leisure. The following chapters will try to verify these statements.
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Since 1842 women were not allowed to work underground and by and by they were banned form surface work as well. Beatrice Campbell thinks that ". . . the movement against the 'pit brow lasses' was about the regulation of women, it was about the social definition of a feminine role." (B. Campbell, 1986: 256). The concequences of this exclusion were manyfold and lasting: Women were bound to the home, they no longer took part in community life which, as has been shown, was closely connected with pit-work. "Feminism faded, women were domesticated" (B. Campbell, 1984 b: 101). They disappeared from public life into a private sphere and became almost invisible to the outside world. The community from then on took care only of the miners, the men. "Mining communities have a very male character. The social and cultural life is geared to those who toil beneath the soil. Between shifts many communities appear like ghost towns, the men at work, the women at home." (S. Taylor: 84).
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There was hardly a way out of their situation for the women until only recently because there were no jobs for them. Mrs. Hanlon described the situation of the early twentieth century: "'We used to have to go down to the council school to do cookery, we got cookery and housewifery down in the big school in Fifth Street Horden. There were no jobs in Blackhall and the girls that had left school before me all had to go to service in Hartlepool. '" (Hanlon: 14). There were two more problems the women had to deal with: On the one hand it was against Victorian values to work as a woman. On the other for a married woman having a job meant twice the work: "In working-class families taking a job did not mean the substitution of one form of menial labour for another. It meant rather that the housewife would be expected to do her new job as well as performing all her usual domestic duties." (J. Benson: 130). The situation has not improved very much. In many mining communities the colliery canteen offered the only employment for women and payment for work the women had always done.
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The communities' leisure facilities were oriented at men's needs. Women could seldomly use these facilities. They were tied to the home because of the children and because men were not prepared to do part of the housework which would have given women time for their own use. This had many consequences: Women in mining communities were traditionally housewives. Unlike the men they did therefore not have a chance "of finding satisfaction in gregarious patterns of communal socialability." (M. Bulmer, 1975: 86). Neither could they organize and so break out of their isolation.
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Unions played a very important role in mining communities. This was also true for "An area such as Northumberland and Durham, which by the 1890s was the most strongly unionised in the whole of the country, with over 11 per cent of the entire population belonging to some union or other," (M. Bulmer, 1978 b: 91). Because they did not work at the pit women were excluded from this important element of the community.
Another barrier was that "social activities and politics were so closely related for miners" (A. John, 1982: 19) which kept women away from politics.
The union itself helped to keep women from their ranks. Its solidarity hardly ever applied to the women and to the women's interests. "The labour movement has been used by and for men to the almost total exclusion of women's interests; it is a movement effectively hijacked by the men's movement." (B. Campbell, 1986: 251). In her book 'Wigan Pier Revisited' which was written before the miners' strike of 1984/85 Beatrice Campbell reports the following event: "A woman in the Northeast involved in a campaign to improve colliery houses arrived at a lodge meeting with material on the houses of its members 'They told me "we've never let a woman on before and we're not going to now" and they didn't.'" (B. Campbell, 1984 b: 110).
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Coal-mining was essentially based on physical strength and after women's exclusion from the industry men alone were praised: "The male culture, or the cult of masculinity as some authors have called it, arises from and is constantly reproduced and re created by, the dangerous nature of work in the pit" (S. Miller: 357). Their fight against nature, against powerful geological forces, made them heroes not only in the eyes of outsiders but for the women in mining communities as well. This cult of masculinity brought some advantages and admiration for the miners but it could only be kept up as long as women remained excluded - not just from minework but from all the other male-dominated areas of the community as well. "So it is that the fetish of masculinity is fashioned in men only milieus" (B. Campbell, 1984 b: 98). Therefore men were not prepared to support attempts to improve women's situation. On the contrary: miners often developed beliefs and customs which counteracted these attempts. It is quite revealing that miners thought women brought bad luck and were therefore not allowed to enter the mines. Some miners even returned home if they met a woman on their way to work! Sometimes they did not go at all: "Men generally won't go to work if their bait isn't made for them. They very, very rarely prepare it themselves" (D. Douglass, 1975: 304).
The miners took it for granted that women stayed at home and took care of the house, children and of the men. They expected a clean home, a hot bath and a meal when they returned from work. Men's work was finished at the end of their shift - women's work was not. Some examples show men's attitudes: "In between I'd say [there] was a sizeable majority who split the responsibility, she the running of the home and the family, he the pit and his own leisure, meeting all reasonable demands." (S. Chaplin, 1978: 30). The split responsibility might have looked like this: "'The married men among us who had small babies used to bring the babies there [to the cricket ground] while the wives did the housework. '" (B. L. Coombes; quoted in J. Benson: 164). There seems to have been a different understanding of equality in mining communities which becomes clear again in G. L. Atkinson's statement: "Amazingly, women are now working underground - in the USA as a result of "sex equality" legislation. So much for progress!" (G. L. Atkinson: 7-8). It is not surprising that women approved of or shared men's attitudes. After all the miners risked their lives for the women and families. Mrs. Whitehall about her husband: "He was the type who liked me here in the home. If he'd been to the club he liked me here waiting when he got back." (Whitehall: 12). She never questions her husband's attitude in the interview.
The miners' demands had become a tradition in the mining communities and like most traditions were difficult to be changed. "Precisely because mining communities are close and supportive, several generations of families live in close proximity and the traditions of family life are observed and repeated. Because one's father did little around the house one does not expect one's own husband to do much." (S. Taylor: 85).
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Through men's work the pit determined women's lives and families. Women's work was almost exclusively for the miners: "'It was the job of the girls of the family to ease the lives of the miners by having hot water ready to fill the tin bath, and after the bath we had to wash out the flappers and socks and put them to dry. '" (A. Hodges: 19; quoted in J. Benson: 129). Kellogg Durland said it even more drastically: "'The men were looked upon as the wage earners, and the lives of the women were given up to making them comfortable. '" (K. Durland: 118; quoted in J. Benson: 128).
For a better understanding of women's roles some aspects of family life shall be looked at here. On the one hand shift work at the pit prevented women form pursuing their own interests and from organizing. They were tied to the home because they had to look after the miners. "You'd get up and see their tin bottles filled with water and put up their bait. Jam and bread or sugar in those days, that's all they'd take." (Nichols: 9). Or:
"'Me father went to work at 4 o'clock. He'd probably get up at 3. The women would get up and make the breakfast and have it ready for him. Now she might have me brothers going down the pit at 4. 00. She'd stay up for them get their breakfasts. It would be quarter to four at the earliest when she got back to bed again. Then she'd get back up at half past seven or eight to set us off to school. The one that went out at 4, he would come back in at 11. 00 in the morning she'd have a meal on for him have a meal on for the lads comin in, a meal on for us comin from school. Then in the meantime she'd have a big metal pan on the fire filled with water, that plus the boiler that was attached to the fire to get the bath water. A zinc bath stood on the floor. They took turns in washing in that. The women were the 'heroes' they worked harder, and helped each other too, I think all in all they worked longer, harder shifts than the men. '" (D. F. Wilson: 48).
Women not only had no time to organize they were also isolated by the housework. "Housework is also very isolating - it is something carried out in private and on an individual basis" (J. Coulter / et. al: 204).
Another aspect was that housework was not regarded as 'real work'. Only work which was subject to the forces of the market was valued - in mining communities only men's work. But women had no choice. They had to work at home and, hardly astonishing, they tried to raise their work's value: "Cleanliness, constant scrubbing and diligence in household tasks was as important to the wife (for many years the whitest doorstep was a very important status symbol and source of pride) as hewing the coal was to her husband." (M. Holderness: 27). This pride in housework reinforced the existing conditions - the husband earned the money and the wife looked after the home and the children - and it would have been difficult to break out of these conditions. Difficult because it would have been against tradition and against one's socialisation: "Sons are destined to be miners, and daughters the wives of miners. This is reinforced by occupational homogeneity, and social and geographical isolation from the rest of society." (M. Bulmer, 1978 c: 33). Therefore women remained economically and politically powerless.
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The three aspects had to have an effect on women and on their identity. It also had to influence the picture others had of them.
"In mining communities women rarely have an identity that can be called their own, they are either miners' wives or miners' daughters. You are always introduced to new people by reference to that relationship and always have to live with the fact that it is assumed that your opinions are identical to those of your menfolk. In my experience this definition of women by your relationship to men undermines your self-confidence and sense of identity. Always to define yourself as relating to an industry which offers no role for women, or recognition of your value outside of the home, means that it is difficult to have an image of yourself or your future, except through a man. At one level it means that you always view yourself as of secondary importance." (S. Taylor: 85)
Without identity, without own opinions and in the end without self-confidence women could not effectively and powerfully fight for their interests. They usually accepted their fate: "Most miners' wives accept the fact that their first responsibility is to make sure their husbands' food is ready when he returns and that he comes into a comfortable home." (M. Pitt: 76). The following statements by some miners' wives have the same tenor:
"I think that if a woman's got a home, she should stay in and look after the children. There's some of them that are just left to run wild. I liked to know where she was, my daughter, even when she was 19." (Dixon: 5).
Or: "You always had to have a hot meal ready for your husband. The girls were brought up to it in a way. That's just the way it was." (Nichols: 9).
Or: "I had a nice, happy childhood. I went to school in Brandon and when I left school I learned shorthand and typing. I got my first post at the Miners Hall, Redhills, Durham and was there until the end of the 1918 war. I enjoyed it, but of course we had to give up when the men came back" (Gee: 13).
'A woman should stay in', 'That's just the way it was', 'of course we had to give up': Obviously women did not rebel against the existing role structure, they more or less kept in the background. There are hardly any publications by women from mining communities from the time before the miners' strike 1984/85, miners' autobiographies rarely mention women and even historians started only about twenty years ago to research their roles in the past "and so half the population disappears off the historical map." (WCCPL: 25).
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Mining-communities hardly changed until the second world war. Like mining, its work methods and working conditions, the communities remained in their essential characteristics as they had been for centuries. Only with the rapid development of mass media and of communications new ideas and values entered the mining communities and partly ended the isolation which in turn had to influence men's and women's roles. "It was in the 1960s that younger miners started to drink somewhere less rough and ready where they weren't ashamed to take their wives or girlfriends." (M. Pollard: 25). A better economic and social situation also helped considerably to change the mining communities: "Part of all this can be explained simply by greater affluence and by Britain's national surrender to the consumer philosophy. But it would not have been possible if conditions underground had not altered the colliers' perception of themselves. This change can be put down largely to mechanisation. [. . . ] It would be surprising if this change had not been reflected in the collier's surface life." (M. Pollard: 25-26). Pollard describes this effect in more detail:
"At Grimethorpe, near Barnsley, one of the centres of the British macho-collier tradition, it was said in 1982 that about half the married men were owner occupiers. With owner-occupation went a different way of life: landscaped gardens, fitted kitchens, pedigree dogs, holidays in the States or Hawaii, even dreams of private education for the children. Face-workers whose fathers wouldn't even bring the coal in from the shed were to be found hoovering, changing nappies, seeing the children off to school. One in six of Grimethorpe's men played golf regularly, some shift workers turning up for a round at dawn. There were still twelve-pint-a-night men to be found, but many others opted for a video in the lounge and a drop of homebrew or even a glass of wine made up from a Boots' kit." (M. Pollard: 25)
Despite all the changes of the last two decades traditional values and beliefs stayed alive even in those mining communities whose colliery had long been closed: "'. . . the social patterns and attitudes of a single-occupation community have outlasted the extinction of coal mining (in the town) since the war; this is evidenced in the more localised kinship and friendship network, the communication of local information relatively more through conversation than through newspapers, and in the continuing importance and popularity of the Working Men's Clubs. '" (C. C. Taylor / A. R. Townsend: 141; quoted in M. Bulmer, 1978 c: 41).
Women's roles had hardly changed until 1984/85. Many women worked then but most of them only part-time, their wages were usually lower than men's. In the collieries the highest paid women earned less than the lowest paid man! And there were other kinds of discrimination as well: "men and women do not receive identical treatment under our present social security system, for a woman's rights to benefit are determined by her marital status to an extent to which a man's entitlement is not." (H. Land: 108). Women, not only those in mining communities, were still rather dependent on their husbands and the supportive character of their roles hardly changed.
In her studies Margaret Holderness found out that "All the women I interviewed agreed that support for the husband was important and necessary." (M. Holderness: 35). The conservative government under prime minister Margaret Thatcher helped to strengthen women's traditional roles:
"Thatcher and her all-male cabinet have pursued policies which are designed to make life worse for most women. They do not hide their aims. Back in 1983 the Tory Family Policy Group outlined its plans for women. It aimed:'. . . to encourage families to resume responsibilities taken on by the state, for example, responsibility for the disabled, the elderly and unemployed 16 years old'. In other words they were saying that a woman's place is in the home doing free of charge, work previously done by the welfare state. [. . . ] The March 1985 budget confirmed this plan with proposals that a married man's tax allowances should be raised to the same level as it would be if both partners were working, to make it 'economically attractive' for the wife to stay at home." (Workers Power, 1985: 2).
