THEY were ordinary housewives and mums who became extraordinary champions fighting for their beliefs. Notts women, who backed the striking miners in their battle against pit closures, juggled childcare and sometimes jobs to organise and speak at public rallies, attend meetings and stand on picket lines.

They raised funds for families with no income, provided proper meals, distributed food parcels and made sure the children didn't go without clothing or pocket money.

The woman firing them up was a formidable pensioner, who was approaching 70 when the strike began in 1984.

Ida Hackett, an active trade unionist all her life, said: "I don't know how it happened but it galvanised and within a short space of time we'd got women from all the areas in Notts and we were getting together."

Each of the 27 pits in areas including Annesley, Calverton, Bilsthorpe and Gedling, had its own group of women supporters.

They had weekly meetings to exchange information through Notts Women Against Pit Closures, chaired by Mrs Hackett from Mansfield.

She was a miner's daughter who decades before had experienced the hardship a strike can bring. As an 11-year-old during the 1926 strike, she remembered how families had to survive on soup made from bones from butchers and vegetables from their allotments.

Recalling the hunger, she was adamant this time families would be properly fed.

The phrase "soup kitchens" prompts an instant rebuke from the 94-year-old great-grandmother.

"We didn't have soup kitchens. There were real food kitchens in village halls and schools."

"When I knew the strike was coming I was determined there would be proper food for the families of striking miners."

Within six weeks of the Notts group setting up, a national committee was established.

"The women co-ordinated everything, not just the food. They campaigned wherever necessary," said Mrs Hackett, who ranks these staunch protesters with the suffragettes and Greenham Common women.

"I will never witness it again. I am still so amazed and so proud – women, who had not done anything like this before, whose potential came to the fore in every possible way."

Through the hardship, friendships were forged.

Many were miners' wives and daughters. Others from non-mining families sympathised with their plight like the campaign group secretary Liz Hollis, a minister's daughter.

Because Notts strikers were in the minority, they were having to survive without union funds leaving them totally dependent on donations of food and handouts from the hardship fund.

As well as supporting around 3,000 striking miners out of a workforce of 30,000 in Notts, the women's groups helped a further 3,000 miners living in the county who could no longer afford to travel to their pits in Derbyshire and South Yorks.

Every week women from each support group came to collect £1,500 worth of food and toiletries, donated by the Union of Communication Workers in London, to give out in their communities.

Another important role was fund-raising.

Mrs Hackett wrote to the socialist newspaper the Morning Star, complaining about the plight of the penniless Notts miners. Within days of the letter being published, she was invited to London to build up a network of support there. Soon letters began arriving from well-wishers around the country. One from a couple in Essex was typical. They sent £5 with the message: "Good to see that women are now out in the fight."

Around £4,000 a week was pouring in by November – donations from a sponsored parachute jump, a firm of solicitors, unions including Aslef and individuals.

Some of the cash went on the children: pocket money, clothing or day trips. The women organised Christmas parties too.

Offers of help poured in from around the world. A cargo of food came from Russia. But one of the most touching gestures was a bag of nuts that arrived in the post from a peasant woman in India.

Mrs Hackett said: "I just cried. It is emotional, I don't care who hears me say it."

Throughout the bitter struggle, they strove to keep homes together by ensuring that no family had their gas or electricity cut off, trying to prevent evictions for non-payment or rent or repossession through mortgage arrears.

Mrs Hackett joined her 'sisters' on the picket line. "I think there was a little bit of scepticism at first but the men welcomed us," she said.

She recalled being jostled and chased away by police.

"It was an intimidating thing to go on the line with the police. It was hard for those with children who didn't know if they were going to make it home if they were arrested."

The women penned an angry letter to 1980s breakfast programme TV AM objecting to attacks in the media on the striking miners.

"We abhor the way in which the media have constantly attacked the men who for the past nine months have stood out strong and determined to fight for their jobs, communities and children's futures," they wrote.

While Mrs Hackett was in the public spotlight, her ailing husband Ernest played his part at home. He'd had two strokes and three heart attacks but he answered the phone, wrote thank you letters following donations and answered queries.

The couple celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary on July 8, 1984, the same day as a huge Food for Victory event at The Forest recreation ground in Nottingham.

"There were over 9,000 people there and they made a presentation to me and Ernest of a miner's lamp and a bouquet," said Mrs Hackett.

The following January she turned down an invitation to speak at women's groups in America because of her husband's health. He died a few weeks later, not long before the strike ended.

In a tribute to women supporters, Arthur Scargill said: "The establishment of the women's support groups has been a phenomena without parallel in modern times and history will show that what you have achieved is possibly the greatest advance for women ever since the suffragette movement."

Mrs Hackett was made an honorary member of the union for loyal and untiring service but she dedicates the accolade to every woman involved in the fight.

NUM vice president Keith Stanley once told her: "Behind every striking miner there is a good woman."

She told him he was wrong: "They are either at the side or in front."