More than half the country's 187,000 miners were on strike, over plans to close 70 pits over the next five years.
Miners wives started women's groups all over the country and as Claudia Hammond discovered, for some women, their experiences during the strikes resulted in life-long changes.
Back when the miners strike started Kitty Holden and Sonya Hopwood were both full time mothers married to miners working in Hatfield near Doncaster.
When the mines were threatened with closure, their husbands joined the strike and Kitty lead a group of women fundraising and distributing food to miners' families.
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