The Legacy of the Iron Ladies. Strength, Solidarity, and Sisterhood.
Iron Ladies is a powerful and deeply moving documentary that gives voice to the women who became the backbone of the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike. While many films have focused on the men on the picket lines, this one turns its gaze to the women who held their communities together, often stepping into roles they had never expected, and in doing so, reshaped what activism and solidarity could look like.
What makes this film stand out is its honesty. There are no competing narratives from politicians, journalists, or police. Instead, the women themselves tell their stories — of hardship, courage, and collective resilience. These are women like Heather Wood, who became a central figure in Save Easington Area Mines, and Lorraine Stansbie, whose voice rang out at the Barnsley rally in 1984. Their words aren’t polished soundbites; they are lived experiences, raw and real.
The film captures how, out of necessity, these women built networks of solidarity that crossed pit villages, counties, and class divides. They ran kitchens, organised rallies, marched in the streets, and spoke up when silence was expected of them. They discovered a strength they perhaps never realised they had, and in doing so, gave a generation of working-class women a voice that could not be silenced.
This solidarity did not end when the strike was over. For many, it became the beginning of a lifelong commitment to activism and community. The film reminds us that these women didn’t simply return to the shadows once the pits closed. They went on to fight for workers’ rights, social justice, and political representation. Their courage created space for women to be leaders in movements where they had once been expected only to support from the sidelines.
And this is where the film resonates most strongly today. The spirit of those women lives on in every protest led by working-class communities, every grassroots campaign that demands justice, and every woman who refuses to accept silence as her role. The networks they built and the courage they modelled reshaped what political activism looks like for women — not just in mining communities, but across Britain.
Watching Iron Ladies, I was struck by how much their struggle still echoes in our current political climate. It is a reminder that solidarity, once forged, cannot easily be broken. It also highlights how ordinary women, when pushed to the edge, can rise to extraordinary heights of leadership and resilience.
This is more than a documentary about the past — it’s a celebration of a legacy that continues to inspire women to stand together, to fight for their communities, and to believe in their power to create change.
For me, Iron Ladies was both humbling and uplifting. It shows us that history is not just written by the powerful but lived — and carried forward — by the iron will of women who refused to be forgotten.
Here we go, here we go, here we go — for the women of the working class, and for all those who came after them.
Poppy Watt