ONCE the strike began grassroots women’s groups started to grow in the coalfields. They set up communal kitchens and prepared food parcels, persuading food shops to offer discounts for their bulk-buying operations. 

Local shops, whether independents or branches of large chains, had an interest in offering such discounts in strike areas because their takings had plummeted once miners had little or no income. 

Soon the sheer scale of need, with their children hungry and needing new clothes, forced the women’s groups to expand their activities. They began hunting for donations of second-hand clothes, shoes, children’s pushchairs and babies’ bottles.