The Miners' Strike

They say that in every Nottscop’s career there comes a period which will remain forever in the heart. When I joined in 1974 old Nottscops talked about the war and the City/County amalgamation in 1968 (which was another war!). In my case the outstanding era was the Miners’ Strike, which started in 1984 and fizzled out the next year. I wonder why we never got campaign medals for it!

The dispute started when the Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, announced the closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire. This was to be the first of 20 pit closures with the loss of 20,000 jobs. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) led by its leader Arthur Scargill responded by calling for a national strike. The big problem was, the strike was always unoffical as no secret ballots were held, thus making the dispute technically illegal. Miners were split and those who chose to work had the lawful right to do so and it was the role of the police to ensure that they enjoyed their legal right to work without fear of reprisal. That was the theory anyway. The reality was that Nottinghamshire Police were completely overwhelmed by the demands for policing the dispute and brought about the biggest mutual-aid programme that this country has ever seen with officers throughout England and Wales accomodated, fed and watered within the county. At it's height 165,000 miners were out on strike nationally. They were supported by people from all over the world. In many communities miners' wives pushed the struggle forward, joining picket lines and arranging communal food kitchens. The Government responded by putting more and more police into the coal fields.

Initially the police dealt with the escalating problem by showing a force at each pit mainly at shift change times when working miners needed protection from the travelling, or “flying, pickets. After a short while the strategy changed to setting up intercept points around the county to stop and turn away the pickets on their way to the coalfields. As a traffic officer I spent many hours at these points especially on the roundabout at Pleasley checking traffic coming off the M1. This was often in company with the crew of a Police Support Unit van who were often as bored as I was. Overall the twelve-hour duty on these points was long and boring looking out for vehicles that we thought might contain pickets. As a rule, four men speaking Yorkshire dressed in donkey jackets and travelling in a Morris Marina with a brake light out, was always a give away! Our brief was always to form the suspicion that a breach of the peace would ensue if pickets were allowed to continue to the coalfields, a concept that was later to be challenged fiercely in the court cases which came about later. Remember the packed meals? The Ramscar specials! These consisted of a pork pie, crisps, Mars bar, corned beef sandwiches, an apple, fruit cake and a soft drink crammed into a white square shaped box. If your shift was to be over twelve hours then you had two! Sitting in a car with the engine running and the heater on for all that time stuffing yourself with all that carbohydrate was not good. I think I put on about two stones in a week. The most incredible thing was the overtime. We worked weeks on end at twelve to thirteen hours a day, five days a week. After all this time I think we can look back and say it was a godsend and many officers bought new cars on the strength of it. Met officers even signed up for mortgages on the belief that their new increased income would last forever. The money was good but with all the time on duty, we didn’t have time to spend it.

After 51 weeks on strike, a special delegate conference of the NUM voted by 98 to 91 votes to return to work.

Ex Pc Andy Padmore recalls, "My memories include Pot Noodles, Ginsters pies and Mars Bar eating competitions. Some bobbies had fridges full of the pies apparently because a lot of us didn't want ours. We were well fed at the pits so the packed meals often went untouched (except for the mars bars). 'Maxpax' must have made a fortune, we got
through tubes of the stuff and the empties made good seed pots for the
gardeners.
I remember being given a pit deputy's stick at one pit, but not sure what they did with them (poke around for loose rocks?). I've still got the brass 'tally' with my collar number (83) on that we were all given at Bilsthorpe Colliery but it is a bit thin after hanging on my keyring all these years.
For a time I was the designated driver and one night shift while in the north of the county, while the rest of the van were asleep (including the sergeant), I swerved slightly to miss a hedgehog in the road. Of course the van all woke up and accused me of nearly crashing. The Sergeant had a go at me and I of course had a go back because I was the only one who knew what had happened (nothing). A short time later I was informed that I was to go on
a week long refresher driving course because the sergeant (he knows who he is) had gone to the inspector and spun him a yarn about an incident he had no knowledge of. I had a great week driving about on full pay on day shifts when I should have been lates. I still swerve for hedghogs to this day."

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