Kentucky Miners Xmas Message to British Striking Miners
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Established in 2001, the National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive holds an unrivalled collection of films, TV and radio broadcasts, video tapes and sound recordings relating to Wales and the Welsh, from 1898 to the present day. The collection spans multiples formats and genres, both professional and amateur.
Kentucky Miners Xmas Message to British Striking Miners
Solidarity across the Atlantic.
Miners from Kentucky, together with family members and supporters, greet striking British coal workers, speaking movingly about their mutual struggles for jobs and livelihoods, and the support already shown to the US miners by their British counterparts. The last contributor, Helen Lewis, who has worked for thirty years as a teacher and writer in the Appalachian Coalfields, sends a special message to the Welsh mining community as she spent some time living in the Valleys, and therefore sends greeting to miners in places such as Rhondda, Treforgan, Maerdy and Abernant. She recalls a group of Welsh miners visiting the US coalfields in 1979, where they could not believe the police brutality during the strike there. Now, she says, they see the same thing happening in their own country.
The writing may have been on the wall for coalfields, but in Wales a good fight was fought, and forces unleashed that live on today.
Strikes by Welsh coalminers had met with variable success until the strike of 1984-85, which undeniably ended badly for the workers. This was a traumatic strike for many reasons, both during and after the action; despite all efforts the end results were pit closures, devastating job losses, the crushing of the NUM and of whole Welsh communities.
Through all the hardship, however, stories of togetherness and solidarity resonate to this day, often with women at their heart. The women of the mining communities, often joining forces with women supporters in other UK coalfields, came into their own during this one brutal year. The skills and confidence they acquired prepared the ground for a new Welsh politics in which women and women's groups became significantly more prominent.
This collection highlights the efforts of these heroic women, as well as the thoughts and views of many miners on and off the picket line; there is even a message of transatlantic goodwill and solidarity. One message above all is abundantly clear from these films: this strike was not endured for jobs and wages alone, and while its material aims were ultimately crushed, there remains a hard-won legacy in Wales.
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Kentucky Miners Xmas Message to British Striking Miners
