On the day the men went back, I was working in a local shirt factory. Many of the miners’ wives had worked there and, throughout the strike, they had worked long hours there to keep families going. But the managers had kept putting the targets up, just to take advantage of these desperate women. The women couldn’t hit these targets so they didn’t get their full bonuses, and the managers used to revel in the fact that they were doing this, upping the targets. So many of the women were glad, in one way, that their men were going back to work.
