“Anne & Betty United by the Struggle”, with Ian Clayton. Published by Route.

Posted on October 12, 2020 by Admin

This publication is a rarity. Working-class women who fight for social justice seldom get an opportunity to tell their own story in their own voices. Social, trade union and labour history is sometimes interpreted by those far removed from the day-to-day lives and experience of those directly involved. The contributions of working class women remains unacknowledged and invisible when it comes to the absence of their names and images on the public monuments and street names of our cities and towns.

Anne Scargill and Betty Cook did not come together until the beginning of the British Miners’ Strike in 1984/85 when they both joined “The Women Against Pit Closures Movement”. What followed was a roller coaster of practical action including feeding their striking neighbours and taking direct action to protect their communities.

However, it also led to a personal journey for each of them. Both were married with families at the beginning of the strike but through the tumult of the mining war in the North of England, alongside a passion to stand against exploitation of people, they achieved their own personal independence and freedom in spite of the disastrous outcome of the Miners’ Strike. In the midst of defeat, Anne and Betty emerged with the power to act as they had discovered their own voices.

The accounts of their early lives in Barnsley and Brick Lane are told in raw unvarnished personal accounts, without self pity, without preaching or seeking acceptance…… life was tough in the coal fields. Yet they tell their stories with gritty humour, compassion and fierce direct humanity in spite of personal tragedy and upheaval in their lives. The chapter: “Rent A Mob, Rent a Gob” leaves one angry and yet uplifted.

Today they look back on a life of standing firm against the exploitation of workers and they do so with a sense of pride. Both remain committed to the struggle. Betty recently retired from a call-centre at the age of 81, however, she is worried that ” a lot of working-class people are against one another”, while Anne says that “anybody who needs help on a picket line only has to pick up the phone and I’ll be there”.

Their trip to the women miners reunion in Appalachia 2013, organised by Marat Moore (friend of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, Guest Speaker at 2012 Festival) led to the founding of The Daughters of Mother Jones group in the UK and inspired their interest in Mother Jones. Few will forget Anne and Betty’s powerful rendition of Mal Finch’s song “Women of the Working Class” at the Cork Spirit of Mother Jones festival in 2014.

In these dark times for working people with ongoing political upheaval and Covid-19 lockdowns, “Anne & Betty United by the Struggle” illuminates and shines warmly through adversity, hard times and the necessity to keep fighting against injustice.

This book is highly recommended and is available from annescargillbettycook@gmail.com

Anne & Betty with their Daughter of Mother Jones banner at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in 2019. (Courtesy of Claire Stack).

Anne & betty helping striking SIPTU workers in Dublin in 2014 (Courtesy J Thomson)

134th Annual Durham Miner’s Gala, 14th July

Posted on July 5, 2018 by Admin

A word from our friends in Durham, England:—

Durham Gala parade of banners pass the reviewing platform at the old County Hotel, Durham

The 134th Annual Durham Miners Gala takes place on Saturday 14th July 2018. Starting at 8 am, the colourful parade of banners and bands passes through the ancient town towards the picturesque Racecourse on the banks of the Wear where the annual Big Meeting is held. Meanwhile the blessing of the new banners takes place at the imposing Durham Cathedral overlooking the town.

Among the speakers this year will include Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, making his fourth appearance. He will be joined by Emily Thornberry MP, the shadow foreign secretary. Francis O’Grady, the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress will also appear.

Dave Hopper with Lord Mayor — The late Dave Hopper of the Durham Miner’s Association visiting Lord Mayor Chris O’Leary during Mother Jones festival in 2014

Estimates of the massive crowds which attend this unique event vary from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand.

With its mixture of music, politics, and community spirit and pride, the event has been growing in strength and has been increasingly attracting world wide interest and now represents a very important public display of trade union and community solidarity.

Sudden death of Dave Hopper, Chair of Durham Miners’ Gala

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Admin

The Cork Mother Jones Committee is shocked to learn this evening of the sudden death earlier today of Dave Hopper, Chair of the Durham Miners’ Gala and a great friend and supporter of our festival. Dave was due to visit Cork later this month for the 2016 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival and we were very much looking forward to his as always forthright and intelligent contribution. Just a week ago a member of Cork Mother Jones festival visited Durham for the annual Miners’ Gala and met with Davy who was also looking forward to his trip to Cork.

We are deeply saddened to hear of Davy’s passing. We are certain that he will be a huge loss to the trade union movement and to the struggle for social justice and decency in his own country and internationally. Davy as truly a man with the determination and spirit of Mother Jones. Our sympathy to his family and friends.

Davy Hopper beside the Daughters of Mother Jones banner at last year’s festival in Cork

Anne Scargill & Betty Cook sing “The Women’s Song”

Posted on October 4, 2014 by Admin

Anne Scargill and Betty Cook, Women Against Pit Closures at the Firkin Crane with Yorkshire Mother Jones banner.

A number of people have asked if any video footage was available of Anne Scargill and Betty Cook of Women Against Pit Closures singing their anthem from the Miners Strike era – “The Women’s Song”. The song was written by Mal Finch. Our thanks to Frameworks Films for the video. By popular demand here it is – performed during their session at the Firkin Crane on July 31st.

Mother Jones in the minefields of West Virginia

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Admin

“Mother Jones in the Minefields of West Virginia: An American Adventure Story”

Prof. Jim Green

The 2014 Cork Mother Jones Lecture will be presented by Professor James Green of the University of Massachussets, Boston. The lecture will take place at 7.30 at the Firkin Crane Centre in Shandon on Tuesday 29^th July.

James Green was inspired by John F Kennedy’s speech calling racial inequality a “moral issue”, he was stunned by the assassination of Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers that same night. Moved by Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” in August 1963 and devastated by Kennedy’s assassination in November.

He worked as an intern in the office of Illinois Senator Paul H Douglas for two summers in 1965 and 1966 and met Senator Eugene McCarthy, whose Presidential primary campaign he joined in 1968. Later he met Senator George McGovern, who had earned a PhD in labour history from Northwestern University.

“All three men played roles in public life I admired”

Jim studied for his own PhD in history with C. Vann Woodward at Yale and became fascinated with the history of radicalism and political protest in the United States.

“My purpose was to study the past to understand injustice in our society-and then to explain how men and women who suffered from injustice gained the will to struggle against it and to strive for a better society”

Jim has worked to fight against injustice and worked for a better society for almost half a century!

The Cork Mother Jones Committee is very honoured to have Professor James Green deliver the third annual Cork Mother Jones Lecture at the Firkin Crane on Tuesday 29^th July at 7.30pm.

Interesting films at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2014

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Admin

Film has been an important part of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival since the beginning. This year we will be showing five films covering the struggles of people in extraordinary situations in the fight for justice and rights. All film showings are free of charge. All welcome.

Tuesday 29th July – Friday 1st August 2014

Admission is free and all are welcome. Firkin Crane Centre Shandon 6.00: “Mother Jones, America’s Most Dangerous Woman” a film by Rosemary Feurer and Laura Vazquez. Mother Jones: America’s Most Dangerous Woman is a documentary about the amazing labor heroine, Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones. Mother Jones’ organising career influenced the history of early 20th century United States. She overcame class and gender limitations to shape an identity that allowed her to become an effective labor organizer in the early 20th century. Mother Jones transformed personal and political grief and rage about class injustices into an effective persona that led workers into battles that changed the course of history. The terrible conditions and labor oppression of the time motivated her to traverse the country, in order to organise against injustices.

Release Date: May 2007 (Canada) Runtime: 24 min

Thursday: 31st July

(Firkin Crane Centre downstairs) 11am: Film: The Battle for Orgreave, (A film by Yvette Vanson, Producer/Director. www.yvettevanson). In this film we witness the violent struggle of miners trying to save their jobs in what became one of the biggest public disturbances Britain has ever seen. The camera focuses on the blood covered face of an angry protester, he looks defiant as he is led away by riot police. This is no criminal but a man trying to protect his livelihood. 55 miners faced long prison terms because of their involvement in the disturbance at Orgreave. This film looks at their fight for justice. Orgreave in the North of England was the focal point for a mass protest by miners in June 1984. At this time miners were angry over proposed pit closures and reacted by striking and pressurising other pits to close. The culmination of these protests was a mass gathering of miners from all over the country at Orgreave. On the morning of 18th June miners were escorted into Orgreave. At this point police tactics already resembled a military campaign. After a push by the miners the police acted with force charging the pickets on horses. The protest soon turned violent with the police using heavy-handed tactics such as dogs and batons in an attempt to suppress the riot. In this film we interview defendants about their experiences of being at Orgreave and the tactics used by police.

Release Date:  1985 Runtime: 52 min 5.30 pm

“Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre” a film from Greece by Lamprini Thoma and Nickos Ventouras. (Irish Premier) The Ludlow Massacre and the assassination of Greek immigrant and labor leader Louis Tikas (Elias Spantidakis) is one of the decisive moments of the American labor movement, an event that connects, a century later, the United States of 1914 to the labor and immigrant demands of Greece of 2014. Lamprini Thoma and Nikolaos Ventouras examined the memories, the history and the legacy of Louis Tikas and the Ludlow massacre in Colorado, talked with prominent historians, artists and descendants of Ludlow miners, and documented the scars left by this tragedy on the body of working America. Release Date:  2014 Runtime: 92 min http://www.palikari.org/

Friday 1st August. Mother Jones Day.

(Firkin Crane Centre downstairs) 11am: The extraordinary life and death of Tadhg Barry from Blarney St. (Frameworks Films) with Trevor Quinn SIPTU, Jack O’Sullivan CCTU. This documentary tells the story of Tadhg Barry (1880-1921), a native of Cork city, who has largely been forgotten. It seems hard to believe that a man whose funeral closed shops and factories could be relegated to a footnote in history. And yet this is what has happened to a man who was one of the last people to be killed by British forces during Ireland’s War of Independence, just weeks prior to the signing of the Treaty.

Release Date:  2013

Tadhg Barry Remembered has been produced by Frameworks Films in collaboration with the Cork Council of Trade Unions for broadcast on Cork Community Television. It was first broadcast on Cork Community Television on Sunday 5th May at 8pm. The documentary was funded under the Sound & Vision scheme, an initiative of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

8.00 pm: “Mother Jones and her Children”. (Firkin Crane upstairs.) Documentary Premiere by Frameworks Films. Release Date:  2014

The Battle for Orgreave – 30 years on

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Admin

Orgreave Festival poster 2014

Paul Winter of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Committee (OTJC) will speak at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival on Wednesday morning 30^th July 2014 at 12 noon at the Firkin Crane, where as an eye witness he will describe the events of 30 years ago at the Orgreave Coking works during the British Miners Strike.

Paul’s account of his experiences will be preceded by the classic film The Battle for Orgreave by Journeyman Pictures and shown with the kind permission of producer/director Yvette Vanson.

Paul Winter

The Battle for Orgreave was a major event during the British Miners strike. Orgreave was the site of a Coking Works in the North of England which had been subject to picketing in an effort to bring production to a halt during the strike. It then became a focal point of the miners’ anger on the morning of 18^th June 1984 when a mass gathering of pickets from all over Britain converged on Orgreave.

The events of that day have left a lasting legacy of bitterness all across mining communities ever since. Organisations such as the Orgreave Truth and Justice Committee (OTJC) have continued to campaign for the full story of Orgreave to be told. What happened at Orgreave, and the scenes of brutality involving a full scale charge on horseback on the miners by the police gave rise to some of the most horrifying images of violence ever seen in an industrial dispute anywhere!

While Mother Jones in her day would have experienced extreme violence against miners, the scenes at Orgreave were reminiscent of the violence perpetrated on the ordinary workers of Dublin during the infamous 1913 Lockout.

The events of the day formed an essential element of the efforts by the Thatcher government to defeat the miners by any means whatever. The use of the police in this manner by Margaret Thatcher ensured that the events would never be investigated and like the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, the payback was made by official cover ups and lies.

The Cork Mother Jones Committee is extremely grateful to have received permission from Yvette Vanson, the Producer/Director of the film “The Battle For Orgreave” to permit a showing of the film at the Spirit of Mother Jones festival. This was first shown on Channel 4.

This will be followed with a talk by Paul Winter of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Committee. Paul is an ex miner from Barnsley who worked in the mining industry from 1980 to 1993 and was present at the Battle For Orgreave. Paul will describe the events of the day and will discuss the impact of the miners strike on his small but proud and passionate community. An understanding of the sometimes ignored events at Orgreave on that morning in June 1984 is essential to understanding the wider anger and raw feelings of injustice in the mining communities which remain to this very day!

Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre!

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Admin

Palikari………..Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre! Louis Tikas was a good friend of Mother Jones and they worked alongside each other in Colorado in the final months of 1913 when the Colorado miners went on strike. Louis Tikas was born in Crete in 1886 as Elias Anastasios Spantidakis and later emigrated from Greece to the USA. He did a variety of jobs and later went to the coal mines. However he was not happy with the conditions of the Greek miners and others, led a strike and then joined the United Mineworkers of Union (UMWA). Due to the immense respect he had gained among the miners, the United Mineworkers Union appointed him as a union organiser in Trinidad, Colorado. He was to the forefront in organising the camps for the miners and their families as due to the strike they could no longer live in the mining company shacks.

He played a leading role in the strike and it remained solid among the Greeks and other nationalities, so he had effectively become a marked man. On the morning of 20^th April 1914, Tikas ensured that many miners and their families were able to escape from the Ludlow camp to the nearby hills following the ongoing attacks from the militia and the hired gunmen employed by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company owned by John D Rockefeller, Jr. Later in the day he and two others were captured by the militia and were assassinated by Captain Linderfelt and left by the side of the railway tracks at Ludlow. Tikas and his comrades were buried at Trinidad few days later at a huge funeral attended by thousands of miners. He was just 28 years old. Similar to the way Mother Jones was largely forgotten after her death, a similar fate befell Louis Tikas. Now Lamprini C Thoma, producer and Nichos Ventouras, director in their splendid new documentary “Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre” have brought Tikas and the events at Ludlow back to his homeland in Greece and Europe.

The Cork Mother Jones Committee is very proud to announce that their film “Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre” will receive its first showing outside of Greece at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival at Shandon near where Mary Harris was born. The film will be shown on Thursday evening 31^st July at the Firkin Crane Centre and we hope to have Lamprini and Nichos present to introduce this amazing documentary. It should not be missed by those interested in the history of America and the role played by brave and courageous union organisers like Louis Tikas and Mother Jones.

The film will be followed later by lectures on the legacy of Ludlow from Professor Jim Green and Rosemary Feurer. “Then came Ludlow and the nation heard” from Mother Jones Autobiography.

The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival

Shandon, Cork City, Ireland

Tag Archives: miners