Queen Coal

by Triona Holden

From the dark corners of obscurity came the voices of the wives, mothers and daughters of miners - previously unheard, inexperienced, unrehearsed. Out of desperation they found the strength and courage to not only stand and fight alongside their men but to become political activists in their own right. Overnight they mastered the media, learnt which journalists to trust and began to appear in the newspapers, and on radio and TV. But when the strike ended in defeat the media lost interest. The women were dumped, allowed to slip back into the shadows. For some the strike brought about a change; they had seen an existence beyond the slagheaps and embraced it. For others the end of the strike meant coming back to earth with a bump. Two decades later Triona Holden, who was one of the BBC correspondents reporting on the strike, takes the reader into the lives of these remarkable women and reveals that what is good and inextinguishable about the mining communities lives on in ...

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Mick Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisiting the strike some 40 years later shows a different world to the one we live in now.we didn't realise how much people especially women were shackled.the book is a double edged sword telling of women's freedom via the miners strike and political machinations of the Thatcher government.each chapter tells story of the women involved and how in a roundabout way liberated them.some couldn't go back to domestic drudgery,a bit reminiscent of how it was for women after both world wars when they were actively wanted for work while men were away,then unceramoniously sent back to the home when the men returned.the ramifacations of the strike,while communities lost,proper jobs lost.some found refuge in other work through retraining,others to this day the scars are still there.well worth reading if only to remind us without unions we would have a more abused workforce.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good insight into a period of history which i lived through from a distance.It reminds us of the huge social cost of the idealogical battle fought out through the miners strike. The stories are a little repetitive. A pleasant read