My attention was drawn to your great archive on the 1979 post strike and I thought you might be interested in the experience of  a postmans wife of the strike.

I am a postmans wife for 39 years now. When the 1979 strike was called who would have thought that it would last for more than four months? At the time of the strike we had a seven-month-old baby and a five and seven year old girl and boy.

I remember the first time (and last) I went to the relieving officer in the local health centre to seek some financial support. I was very embarrassed as it was the first time in my life that I had to look for anything from the state.

Well you would think it was his own money he was giving to you with the amount of questions that he asked, eventually I got 24 pounds from him! I asked myself jesus where will I start with this?

I got a medical card for the three children and myself. I contacted the ESB and Dublin Corporation as we had our mortgage from them to let them know that I could not pay either of them for the foreseeable future. Also the bread and milk deliverymen and I must say that they were very understandable which was a great help and there would have been much more hardship without their support and the support of my neighbours.

We scrimped and scraped for the duration of the strike you can imagine what it was like for five people living on 24 pounds a week.

I laughed when my husband showed me the leaflet that the union issued in commemoration of the strike. Do they think that without the backup of their families and friends a lot of their members would have stood fast in the face of adversity?

With no strike pay for my husband other than 10 pounds for the first two weeks, and the way they were treated by the gardai. Anyone looking at the archives of the strike might think that the post office workers were causing riots instead of using their lawful rights to picket.

When the strike ended the postmen were given a loan of 500 pounds from management. I said to my husband that this wouldn’t make too much of a dent in our bills when he returned to work.

So we went to London for five days and enjoyed ourselves and it was some of the best  money that we ever spent, as we both needed a break after the stresses and strains of try to keep bread on the table and resisting all the forces that were trying to bury the postal workers. My husband spent a long time working overtime to get the finances back on track.

Ah well, thirty years on and thank God we survived to tell the tale.