My views never really seemed to fit on either side of the fence. I was a realist even then with a strong sense of my parentage, and it had been drummed into me from an early age that you don’t get owt for nowt. If you want something its only right that you work for it and it’s better to expect nothing, then you’ll never be disappointed.
When I was young enough for the school holidays to drag and Christmas not to come soon enough, I was blissfully unaware of the amazing heritage of being a coal miner’s daughter in Nottinghamshire. Apart from being the accepted home of Sherwood Forest and that small scattering of ancient woodlands and one particular tree that are lovingly preserved in its name, Nottinghamshire has been an important part of the coal industry for centuries. Sitting on the carboniferous remains of a dense forest, coal was mined there long before the NUM was ever a conceptual gleam in radical socialist’s eye.
The 1984 Miners Strike
