Feminism has almost become the province of theory, not practice, since the early inroads made in the 1970s.

There was an urgency then to the task of challenging women's traditional political place in society.

And few struggles did more for working-class feminism than the 1984-5 miners' strike.

An important exhibition, Coal Not Dole, opened in Barnsley last week to commemorate 30 years since the strike.

It tells the story of thousands of women from traditional mining villages who found themselves balancing the demands of family and community with the desire to have a political voice.

Exhibition curator Gemma Conway has put together a fascinating collection of artefacts about the contribution of Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) to the strike effort.

Jean Miller, a founder member of WAPC, explains: "We don't want anyone to forget what happened during the strike, the role that women played.

"Miners' wives learned to do all sorts of things - standing on a platform speaking, writing, marching, organising.

"All sorts of things. They had a positive part to play and their views were important."

In 1984, second-wave feminism struggled to reconcile class and identity.

For many working-class women, particularly those who were happy to adopt a traditional domestic role, feminism seemed elitist.

They didn't understand or support their academic sisters' terms or demands.

Most working-class women had enough to do juggling low-paid work and bringing up a family. Feminism was for college and career girls, not housewives.

The position of the housewife was almost frozen - deemed non-political, lacking in consciousness.

Feminism sought to free people from the oppressed and lowly position of housewife. Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa argued that women's work was a binding material foundation for feminist action.

It was met with derision. Feminism was for waged women with a political consciousness.

But WAPC proved that feminist action could redefine women, not by rejecting or refusing the role of housewife but by inspiring respect for it.

Women Against Pit Closures was a practical response to the problem of providing for a family through a period of great adversity.

Fundraising, cooking and caring were collectivised within soup kitchens and public events, elevating the status of women's work.

Providing food, heat, support and care to a community became recognised as something of great value, facilitating the continuation of the industrial dispute.

Jean Miller and Sandra Hutchinson were seasoned campaigners with long memories.

Miller was a shop steward, a member of the Communist Party and politically astute. Hutchinson was president of the trades council.

Like Jean she'd been involved with different campaigns and strikes since the 1972 and 1974 miners' strikes.

Miller was anxious that this time women would take an active role. The day the strike started she was at a social at the working men's club.

"I remembered the strike that had happened 10 years before in '74," she says. "I remembered clearly this woman couldn't send her kids to school because they didn't have any shoes.

"For a lot of that strike those kids couldn't go to school. I was determined that if women could get together and work to support the strike we could avoid many of those things."

Miller gathered women together. They sat until the early hours drinking and deciding all sorts of things that they wanted to do.

They wrote a three-page letter to Thatcher. Miller told the others that she knew where she could get it picked up by Reuters, but it was too long and unwieldy.

So they chopped it to a half-page and took it to the editor of the Yorkshire Miner, who distributed the story through the newswire.

Within days the women couldn't get out of their front doors without flashing cameras. The phone rang constantly.

A reporter remarked to Miller: "Do you realise that you might be creating an organisation as significant as Greenham Common women?"

A meeting was hastily arranged for 2pm the following Sunday in a terrace house in the village.

"We sat there at 1pm thinking 'is anyone going to come?'" Miller recalls. "Hundreds of women turned up, literally hundreds.

"The lounge was full. The dining room was full. The passage was full. They were stood on the staircase."

WAPC began in a woman's home.

The women agreed to have regular weekly meetings with funding available so anyone could come.

They started to collect money and food and to organise. Within weeks thousands of women across the country followed suit.

Without these women the strike was just another bitter industrial dispute. The women highlighted the impact of pit closures on family and community in a genuine and moving way.

Support came from Belgium, Italy and the Soviet Union.

Miller remembers walking home from a meeting one evening when a van drew up. A foreign accent asked where they could find WACP.

"You've found them," she told them with a smile.

It was just before Christmas and the van was full of new toys. A few weeks later a phone call came from Belgium. Belgian supporters were sending three vehicles to Hull to arrive in 48 hours.

Police were stopping aid for the miners coming into the country. "We didn't know if there were three transit vans, box vans, articulated lorries or what they were," Miller says.

"The trade union lad went to Hull, got in touch with the union there and we got these vehicles through."

The local council had agreed she could have the village hall to put the goods in. In the end three articulated lorries negotiated the narrow village streets.

Miller's son still wears the Burberry overcoat courtesy of Belgian supporters.

Coal Not Dole is at Experience Barnsley until June 1 2014. Entrance is free