The Legacy by Lynda La Plante

Author:Lynda La Plante
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-04-21T10:13:56+00:00

Chapter 16

EVELYNE may not have thought that anyone had noticed her clothes, but one person did, and was so bitterly angry she tore the newspaper to shreds.

Lizzie-Ann, with a charabanc full of miners’ wives, was on a day trip to Swansea. They had scrubbed their best clothes, begged or borrowed their fares for the trip to listen to a political meeting organized by striking miners’ wives.

The lecturer addressed the women, unaware that actually to be there some of them had spent their week’s food money. Their clothes were clean, why shouldn’t they be? They were proud women, women who would not in any circumstances plead poverty, and their men were proud too. They were there to prove that they encouraged their men to fight for their rights, to claim better wages, they were there to stand up for their striking men.

The naivete of the women, their belief that, by standing up and showing others, they would be followed went sadly amiss. The report that eventually found its way back to the powers-that-be claimed that, judging by the women who had shown up at the meeting, there was not so much hardship as was believed. The women showed no signs of exceptional stress, they seemed clean and prosperous, and it was noted that since the strike the death rate in the villages had dropped. Articles were written by various people stating that the men and boys were benefiting from the open-air life. The women, free from coal dust, began actually to enjoy regular hours. Schoolchildren now had a decent meal provided by the school every day, in some cases eleven meals a week, at a cost to the government of three shillings and sixpence per child. Special supplies of clothes and boots were sent to mining villages.

The state of the women’s minds was even harder to detect than their outward show of ‘prosperous, middle-class women’. The papers reported that they all seemed to be in good spirits, hard-working and running relief funds, collecting money from whist drives, women’s football matches, dances and socials.

None of the government officers seemed really to see these four hundred women or the miners for what they were, an embattled community fighting for its life. The more determined they were to win, the braver the face they showed to the world. As their fellows, the blacklegs, caved in under the strain of unemployment and returned to work, they were slowly breaking the fighting spirit. The ridiculous calculations of strike pay and poor relief screamed out by government propaganda nailed their coffins down.

The strike was almost over, but the women didn’t know it yet. As they travelled back to their villages they had high hopes that they had accomplished much for their men. The year was 1926, and it was a sad year for almost all the families of the largest single body of workers in the country. They had lost their battle and returned to work, caps in hands, defeated.

The Rhondda contingent was on the last stage of the journey.

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