Released in selected cinemas from 10th October, Iron Ladies is the latest documentary feature from Daniel Draper – the Liverpudlian filmmaker behind such films as Almost Liverpool 8, Manifesto, and last year’s Liverpool Story. As a storyteller, Draper’s chief passions are left wing politics and tight-knit community, and in Iron Ladies he finds the perfect intersection between the two. This inspirational and beautifully shot documentary is about more than just the miners’ strike of ’84-’85, it’s about what’s arguably the greatest thing to come out of that struggle. It’s about the Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC), and how they came together from all over the country coming to find their voice and identity.
If you mentioned the phrase “The Iron Lady” in ’80s Britain then you were only talking about one person – Margaret Thatcher. It’s a nickname that’s continued to be synonymous with Britain’s first female prime minister long after her divisive reign concluded in 1990, and even when a biopic of her life starring Meryl Streep was made in 2011, it was called The Iron Lady. The origins of the name came from an anti-Soviet speech Thatcher delivered when she was the leader of the opposition in 1976. In that address she stated that the Soviet Union was “bent on world domination”, attacked the then Labour government’s defence cuts, and made a commitment that her government would increase defence spending align and its foreign policy with the United States.
Soviet journalist Yuri Gavrilov coined the phrase “The Iron Lady” in his report on the speech in Kranaya Zvezda, which was quickly adopted by the British press to describe her uncompromising politics and leadership style. Whatever Gavrilov’s intentions, it was likely impossible for him to foresee the longevity of the nickname, or the manner in which Thatcher approved of it. As she ascended to the role of PM, she revelled in how the moniker implied that she was as strong and unbending as metal while never forgetting her gender, and for her it was important to amplify the message that a woman could be as powerful and successful as any man. Whilst she personally disliked feminism, and famously remarked “I owe nothing to women’s lib” during her first term in power, she wasn’t above using the philosophy as an illustration of her achievement.
By using the title Iron Ladies, Draper reclaims the narrative and the moniker from its unworthy heir (or should that be her?), investing it instead on the indefatigable working class women of the mining communities that Thatcher abused, smeared and vilified in the most unsisterly of fashions. She intended to starve the striking men back to work as part of her plan to end Britain’s coal industry and fatally weaken the working class trade union movement, but failed to account for the women who supported those men. From the coalfields of Scotland, down into Northumberland, across Yorkshire, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire to South Wales, and all the way across to Kent, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of pitmen knew that they had a role to play, and they answered the call. With the working class values that shaped them in their hearts and minds, these women fought tirelessly to feed their communities. Like powerful matriarchs, they wrapped those who needed support in a loving, protective and nurturing embrace, and stood firm against those who wished to attack and eradicate their way of life.
Draper visited the former coalfields of the UK to track down veterans of the WAPC movement, and to hear and champion their stories in a series of insightful interviews in which he remains unobtrusive, preferring to let his subjects speak for themselves. Iron Ladies captures an indispensable archive of social history, its stories ranging from heart-breaking (one woman talks about a friend’s baby who died during the strike, while the mother was ashamed that she couldn’t afford a headstone so the community raised the funds for her), to mixed emotions (another woman recalls how, when she was sixteen, her “big, strong dad” was “brought to his knees” after she gave him a pound coin), to tremendous stories of solidarity (like the $20,000 cheque that Bruce Springsteen personally handed over to the Durham and Northumberland WAPC, or the three deutschmark coins sellotaped to a crayon-written letter from a seven-year-old girl in Germany).
These interviews shine a light on the future of these women and how the strike gave them a voice, with many finding themselves confronted by microphones and expected to deliver speeches to various assembles and delegations. Each of them discusses their initial fear and timidity, before going on to recount how the importance of the cause took them all over the world, and allowed them to grow in confidence and stature with every speech delivered and every country visited. That the WAPC is still a going concern is proof that the strikes changed the direction of their lives, and their determination to inspire working class women today is proof of their commitment to change the lives of others.
It wasn’t just the miners’ wives who found their voice as, in one memorable testimony, a woman recalls how she discovered her daughter’s poetry under her bed while cleaning the house. She visibly chokes-up as she reads out the now forty-year-old ode explicitly directed at Thatcher about what she was doing to her family, the impact of the handwritten verse as fresh today as it was in 1984. I’d wager that it would also be difficult for audiences to contain their emotions, the woman explaining that prior to that discovery she had no idea that her daughter had an interest in poetry.
Inevitably, the subject of feminism will rears its head in any story about women finding their voice and standing up for what they believe in, and one could argue that it’s only here that we find some commonality with Thatcher – who famously distanced herself from the Women’s Liberation movement. One straight-speaking woman recalls how, during an interview with The Guardian, she corrected the paper’s agenda that “feminism was at the forefront of the strike”, and stated that “It weren’t. It were women who wanted to know how they could feed their kids. That’s how it started”. She goes on to explain that “the word ‘feminism’ has been hijacked by the middle classes”, and argues that working class women were frightened off from announcing themselves as such by gatekeepers who, for all their ardent stances, still struggle to accept intersectionality.
Another woman claims that “most of the women involved in that strike wouldn’t have known the sixties feminist movement if it had smacked ’em in the face”, stating that the WAPC was “a completely new movement of women. The biggest politicisation of working class women that I have ever seen, and am ever likely to see I reckon”. “Yeah, we lost the strike,” one woman concedes, “but women gained so much from that strike. It were a win for women” she then emphatically and rightly insists, and as another tearfully puts it, “The women who were involved in the strike gave us freedom”.
It’s in these statements that the narrative of the strikes held by the academics responsible for writing history is proven false, and that Draper’s tribute to these strong female role models is entirely correct. It’s a potent reminder that, when seeking to understand aspects of social history, there’s always a danger of resorting to labels and ideologies at the expense of harsh realities. In the end, its clear that the real feminist role models were these women, who believed in raising everyone up with them, instead of the ultimate toxic “girlboss”, Thatcher.
The footage of post-industrial towns, though sensitively and respectfully captured by Draper’s artful lens, nevertheless show the damage that Thatcher’s destructive war on coal caused, the impact of this act of industrial vandalism continuing to this day. Coming from a former mining town as I do, I imagine that each area calls out for community action on a host of issues ranging from litter clean-up and the protection of community assets, to the fight against unfair working practices and the alarming rise of the far right. Any and all of these issues can benefit from the presence of strong women and an appreciation of what was achieved by their predecessors during the miners’ strike, and it’s from the example of those women that lessons can be learned by grassroots community action today.
Indeed, with the growing presence of racist agitators on our streets falsely proclaiming that they’re protecting women, a campaign called Women Against the Far Right (part of Stand Up to Racism), has recently been launched. Another example of a cause with “ordinary” women at the forefront can be found in Draper’s hometown of Liverpool in Parents for Palestine – a family friendly community that attend demonstrations and organises events in solidarity with the Palestinian people currently at risk of total annihilation by Israel and their complicit partners in the West that sadly include our own Labour government.
Iron Ladies serves to encourage such activists while also reminding them that struggles are called as such for a reason. In a week in which Home Secretary has unveiled new plans to award the police greater powers to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protest, it feels like history is repeating itself. The term “un-British” is being used to “other” and smear such peace activists in much the same way that Thatcher used the “enemy within” during the strike, but the phrase that hasn’t been directed at the Nazi salute throwing far right as they apparently have “legitimate concerns”.
I think I’m right in saying that Iron Ladies is, somewhat remarkably but not surprisingly, the first feature solely dedicated to the experiences of women in the strike. I’m therefore pleased that Draper’s decision to make this film will not only amplify stories that have been seldom heard, but also show exactly what’s possible when communities decide to come together and fight for a righteous cause.
To find a screening of Iron Ladies at a cinema near you (many of which will include Q&A sessions featuring some of the women and community activists local to each area), head over to Draper’s website here.
