Aftermath

Abstract

Abstract This chapter takes up the story of activist groups, as well as the experiences of individual women and of coalfield communities, in the months and years after the strike. Most support groups wound up within weeks of the dispute’s end, but a rump of politicised women kept National Women Against Pit Closures running for several years; this chapter explores the politics of that organisation, and the way that activist networks were reignited during the 1992–3 round of pit closures. This chapter also explores the ways in which coalfield women’s lives changed during the 1980s and 1990s. Like women across the country, women from coalfield communities experienced changes in patterns of work and family life. These were not entirely novel, but the loss of the strike, and the swift closure of pits in the years that followed, accelerated many of the shifts that were already in train before the strike. Finally, this chapter explores the changes wrought on coalfields by pit closures, and the frequently devastating consequences of these for the economy, health, and social fabric of mining communities.