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Lynn Beaton 1985

Shifting Horizons

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Source: Shifting Horizons Lynn Beaton (PDF);
Published: by Canary Press, London October 1985;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.

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CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

1. Pauline — Getting started

2. Doreen — Chasing dreams

3. Pauline — Breaking through

4. Pauline — Getting places

5. Doreen — Hotting up

6. Doreen — Disturbing the peace

7. Pauline — Moving out

8. Doreen — Bruising

9. Pauline — Changing states

10. Doreen — Winter

11. Doreen — What next?

  Afterword


Lynn Beaton is an Australian who before travelling to England during the miners strike worked in a ‘Working Womens Centre’ attached to the ACTU, the Australian equivalent of the TUC. During four years work she researched and published bulletins on a variety of subjects related to women at work. In Australia she has written for Trade Union journals and papers. She also wrote and produced a manual for trade unionists to help them deal with cases of sexual harassment. Her history honours thesis was on women’s employment in Australia during the Second World War and was published as a chapter in Worth her Salt (Hale & Iremonger. Sydney. 1980).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank the whole of Blidworth striking community for enabling me to stay with them and write the book. In particular I want to thank Pip Humber and Alan Radford for their support and friendship. I know there must have been times when they got sick to death of me forever spiriting their wives away to do yet another interview, and I know there were times when they felt some infringement of their personal lives to have intimate details relayed first to me and then to the world. But throughout they both went out of their way to make sure I felt at home and had everything I needed. I want to thank Karen, Laggy and in the last month Ricki Langford, David, Paul, and Mark Humber and Amanda and Michael Radford for making me feel so at home in their homes that I became ‘one of the family’ in both houses.

All three of us would like to thank also those strikers and their families and members of support groups who play a part in this book; Alison, Allan, Noreen Baker, Ann Bradley, Dennis Browne, Sylv Browne, Cambridge Support Group, Mick Carter, Chris, Claire, Clare. Terry Dunne, Fletch, Gay, Nicki Glegg, Margaret Groves, ‘Yorkie’ Groves, Annette Holroyd, Howard Hayman, Mal Howarth, Pauline Howarth, Louise, Sue Maddock, Maureen, Alison New, Maureen North, Gareth Pearce, Ann Petney, Ken and Sue Petney, Ralph, Tony Rose, Jim and Sarah Ryan, Betty Savage, Peter Savage, Doug Shaw, Simon, Lois Smith, Sue, Paul Thomson, Chris Tucker.

I also want to thank my own family for their incredible support and perseverance. In particular my daughters Lucy and Chloe whose understanding of the importance and demands of my work has amazed me. First of all they understood the necessity for me to be away from them for much longer than any of us wanted and secondly they have provided enormous support and help in the final compilation of all the material.

I want to thank the many people who gave me support and encouragement throughout the time it has taken to complete this manuscript. Many of the people who visited Blidworth as supporters of the Strike and many of my own friends in London and in Melbourne have provided me with all sorts of support, encouragement and inspiration which has enabled me to continue.

I want to thank Gerry Beaton, Mary Clarke, Loy McCarthy, Bernadette O'Connell, Betty Sturtivant, Martin Walker and Von Woodhead for help with the production of the manuscript itself.