Iron Ladies review – inspiring account of the women on the miners’ strike picket lines

Fascinating exploration of the women inspired to activism in the Margaret Thatcher era of union-bashing

‘Working-class women’s history isn’t reported. It’s not important.” So says one of the “iron ladies”, the name given by this documentary to the women who supported the miners’ strike of 1984-85. Local groups came together under the banner Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC); many were miners’ wives, like Betty Cook, now in her 80s, who promised herself at the start of the strike she wasn’t going to sit at home and cry. “I’m going to do something,” she says. The women picketed, raised money, organised rallies and peeled spuds by the thousands. One group chained themselves to defence secretary Michael Heseltine’s offices in London.

At this distance, when you think of the miners’ strike picket line, you think of broad-shouldered mining men nose-to-nose with police in high helmets. But the women picketed, too (one jokes that she used to argue with her husband over who went to the picket line and who stayed at home with the kids). One or two describe being judged for their activism (“my mum told me I wasn’t fit to be a wife or a mother”), and journalists from London would ask about feminism. But they weren’t interested in labels, say the women interviewed here. “We were just women who wanted to know how to feed their kids.” As they speak, the thrill is still palpable.