By Dr Lisa Blower, Lecturer in Creative Writing at Keele University. This article first appeared as a Personally Speaking column in the Stoke Sentinel in February 2025.

I was 10 years old when the Miners' Strike was called in 1984. Stoke-on-Trent is a small city yet where we lived, in Baddeley Green, felt far away from the industrial tragedy that was happening on the city's outskirts. True, I was a child not from a mining community (my family were covered in the white dust) and, as it happens, we were in the process of emigrating to Shrewsbury (according to my nan). But 1984 is a landmark year for a group of women who came together as the North Staffs Miners' Wives Action Group, founded to support the sacked miners and their families. Brenda Proctor, Bridget Bell, Hilary McLaren, Doreen Mason, Debbie Patton, Deana Tuck, Gina Earle, Maureen Rowley, Pauline Plant and Rose Hunter. Women who not only made social and political history but took their fight way beyond the coalfield and still do.

So, when I was asked by Susan Moffat at The New Vic Borderlines if I'd be interested in working with Rose to mark 40 years of their continued activism on a commemorative theatre performance, my first thought was – am I the right person for this? And then I wrote down three words: The Miner Birds – thinking singing, territorial, commotion, their ability to repeat words over and over to get them heard.

Since January 2024, and with support from Keele Institute for Social Inclusion, 'The Miner Birds' has taken flight beyond all expectations. Written as a celebration of these women's history though poetry, performance, and song, the play is a reminder of what our local mining community experienced during the strike and beyond. It also brings to life the assiduously documented files full of letters, speeches, photographs and pit camp diaries that the group have collected and preserved since their inception. As Rose said when I first looked through them, "once your eyes had been opened, you couldn't shut them again. And we had to do something."

So, we did something too. Last summer, The New Vic staged five outdoor performances of 'The Miner Birds' with a touring caravan backdrop to replicate the women's 1993 Trentham pit occupation. Our play sold out and it took to the streets for the Chartist and Appetite Festivals. We were overwhelmed by the response; the people who came to share their stories of the strike and how they, through their own communities, had supported the women, especially through the occupation. "The Miner Birds has rekindled my belief in the power of unity," says Sue Moffat. "The production has been achieved with a generous spirit of collaboration and brought together a group of women who have through Rose and Lisa inspired each other."

So, we're delighted to announce that on March 6th 2025, The New Vic will stage a new longer version of the play in the main house with the original cast – at 2.15pm and 7.30pm - to mark both 40 years since the end of the strike and International Women's Day. But there’s more to celebrate. A special exhibition of the group's photographs taken by Kevin Hayes will be shown at Keele in Town from February 25th with their archive now rehomed in Keele University Library's Special Collections.   

"The archive is rare in that it reveals a network of support and solidarity spanning five decades of protest, activism, campaigning and advocacy that charts these women’s stories entirely from their perspective," says Helen Burton, Special Collections and Archives Manager at the University. "It offers an engaging research resource that is sure to surprise, provoke and inspire." 

Professor Helen Parr, Director of Keele Institute for Social Inclusion agrees that this was pioneering work. "It's such an important part of local and national history. These stories need to be told and the voices of those who were there brought to the fore." 

It’s because of those voices that, "my own inner Myna Bird has been ignited," says Sue Moffat. "It's brought home to me the true meaning of sisterhood and solidarity."

The Miner Birds is on at The New Vic on March 6th 2025 2.15pm and 7.30pm   

NOTE: There is much work to be done arranging, cataloguing, digitising and suitably storing the materials, and it will be some time before the archive is fully accessible. In the meantime, we welcome enquiries by email. Helen Burton and Ashleigh Coffey can be reached at special.collections@keele.ac.uk