The state,the police and the judiciary in the miners’ strike: Observations and discussions,thirty years on

Introduction

Testimonies like the one above, collected through a series of interviews in one mining area a year after the miners’ strike of 1984-85 had ended, are plentiful. The capacity of an industrial dispute to tangibly transcend the public world of the picket line into the private world of the home, through means other than simply creating hardship, is one reason why the miners’ strike is not only exceptional, but also deservedly of interest to scholars of all disciplines. Thirty years on, 2015 seems a timely point to revisit one of the most embittered disputes in the history of British industrial relations, which still divides families, former colleagues and entire communities. For Margaret Thatcher’s government and its supporters, the miners’ defeat in March 1985 signified a triumph: finally, they could claim, a government had gained control of the militant, irresponsible trade union movement that had bothered successive governments, of both persuasions, throughout the post-war period. For them, never had the need to tackle demonic trade unionism been better documented than through the wave of militancy that convulsed British industry between 1966 and 1974. This caused particular embarrassment for the Conservative Party when the miners were believed to have been the cause of Edward Heath’s 1974 general election defeat, and his replacement by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. Thatcher’s government, elected in 1979, had a more pressing motivation for curtailing old industrial union power than simply enacting revenge: there was also a wider structural and economic impetus. The belief that the post-war settlement, largely based on Keynesian economics, had broken down, was completely vindicated in Thatcher’s eyes by the Labour administration of 1974-1979, an observation accentuated only by the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, which also served to dilute the public’s support for trade unions. The government that took office in 1979 had a profoundly different motivation from that of any that had come before, and it was convinced of its solution, whatever the human impact. It asserted that, once strong industrial trade unions were controlled, monetarism would ensure that inefficient industries could be replaced by efficient ones, and collective strength could be replaced by entrepreneurial individualism (Dorey 1998).

But it was not only the ideology of the dominant political establishment that was changing. There was political change within the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) by 1984, as the broad-left culture became synonymous with ‘Scargillism’, the particular brand of leadership of its president, Arthur Scargill. This ensured that the union was a different beast than in 1972 and 1974, when on both occasions it had triumphed over Edward Heath’s Conservative government (Taylor 2005; Beckett & Hencke 2009; Darlington 2005). The attention scholars have given to the 1984 strike reflects its exceptional nature. Unlike the strikes of the 1970s, which had been the NUM’s first move into official militancy since 1926, the 1984 strike was different because of the role women played in it; and subsequently, women have developed a narrative of the strike unprecedented in other mining disputes (Seddon 1986; Dolby 1987; Holden 2005 ). The 1984 strike was, for the first time, a strike for jobs, whereas the strikes of the 1970s had been about wages. The impact of this was to push the communities, which had historically formed around the pit, into action. Along with mobilising women, the fight for jobs had broader social, economic and indeed cultural implications, an area that has been studied in some detail by scholars (Winterton 1993; Hudson & Sadler 1985; Parker 1986).

Coal in the 1980s

The zeitgeist of the miners’ union of the 1980s was uncertainty, generated by seemingly unbounding unemployment. Miners had, historically, occupied a particularly indispensable role in British industrial relations by the fact that they extracted an indigenous and vital material from the Earth’s core. But by 1984, this indispensability had been marginalised somewhat, mostly because there was confidence that nuclear power could overtake the efficiency of coal as an energy source (Sweet 1985: 201). Unlike in the 1970s, when the miners were in a strong bargaining position because coal was still a primary source of fuel, by the 1980s, this situation had changed. A government concerned with curtailing the militant capacity of a union that was not only perceived as embodying all that was wrong with irresponsible trade unionism, but one that was also out of step with the modernity of the 1980s, could afford to be more ruthless. The battle lines between government and union were firmly drawn when the National Coal Board (NCB) appointed Ian McGregor, who had been ‘rationalising’ US mining unions and British Steel, as chairman in September 1983 (Scraton 1985: 253). In many ways, the mining industry had been particularly unfortunate: the NUM, created to reflect the industry that was nationalised in 1947, had, just ten years after the industry moved into public ownership, been suffering from pit closures. But, although increasing in number, the social impact of these closures had been beset somewhat because unemployment remained remarkably low, which meant that miners could usually find other sources of work if they were made redundant. Within this troubled trajectory, the union had consistently retained its federal nature; each area of the union was relatively autonomous and, before 1972, there had been numerous unofficial and localised strikes that never became official (Crick 1984). The strikes of the early 1970s had reflected a hiatus in this situation, as national pay parity was achieved via the National Power Loading Agreement (NPLA) of 1966; but unity was all but obliterated following the Area Incentive Scheme of 1977 (Darlington 2005; Taylor 2005) The union’s failed ballot efforts to mobilise grassroots support for national action, in 1982 and 1983, support this view (Darlington 2005).

The 1980s presented a profoundly different context of economic insecurity, mass unemployment and recession. In this context, the NUM’s 1983 Annual Conference formally rejected pit closures, other than on the grounds of exhaustion, and this led to an overtime ban from 31 October 1983 (NUM Annual Conference 1983; NUM Special Conference 1983; Darlington 2005). Yet despite this apparent show of unity across the leadership of the union, the NCB’s pit closure programme impacted on areas to various extents: this would lead to insurmountable divisions (Allen 2009: 281). For example, the announcement of the closure of Cortonwood, on 1 March 1984, was particularly surprising given that the NCB had recently invested £1 million in it, and led to the Yorkshire Area Council beginning a strike (Allen 2009: 281). The area’s official mandate to strike, which legitimised the area strike but not a national strike, was endorsed by the union’s National Executive Committee, under Rule 43, by 21 votes to 3 on 19 April 1984 (Allen 2009: 282). Unlike the strikes of the 1970s, there was no mandate for a national strike: local areas could choose whether to strike or not. Because the issue was around jobs, some miners in more secure coalfields, such as Nottinghamshire, decided not to strike; and as in the 1970s, miners on strike tried to picket these miners out.

A lucky accident

The civil war and resultant conflict that ensued within the union allowed Thatcher to portray Scargill as ‘a Marxist revolutionary going under the guise of a trade union official’ (Fry 2008: 102). MacGregor had a similar view of Scargill as a ‘militant Marxist who had openly desired to bring down the country’ (MacGregor 1987: 194). Trade unions were held in poor regard by many people by the early 1980s – a MORI poll carried out in April 1984 indicated that 90 per cent of respondents felt the union should have held a national ballot before allowing Yorkshire’s action to become official – and the media was able to use this to maintain public opinion against the miners, who had enjoyed mass support in the early 1970s (Times 1984). Legitimised as a threat to order and peace, the miners’ strike needed to be controlled: Leon Brittan, the home secretary, was able to argue that the police were simply preserving democracy (Times 1984). Brittan was able to reassure the public that ‘considerable police resources are available to ensure that anybody who wants to go to work can do so’ (Times 1984). The situation presented Thatcher’s government with a lucky accident: an opportunity to use criminal, rather than civil, sanctions to out-manoeuvre the miners – a tactic the NUM could never circumvent. The Conservative Party had been preparing for a war with the miners before it even won the 1979 election, but its preparations had been focused on the building of an artillery of civil law. The use of the police and criminal law, facilitated because of the disorganised way in which the strike was started, provided a highly effective method to fight the miners that the Conservative government fully exploited. Thatcher could, in this situation, publicly vindicate her own actions by claiming that she was championing the ‘rule of law’ against ‘mob rule’ (BBC 2009). In fact, the use of tough policing and criminal sanctions was, simply, an effective way through which to remove a portion of – or the most troublesome – pickets. The figures evidence this argument: on average, 942 miners were arrested during each month of the strike, mostly under the 1936 Public Order Act; and by March 1985, 5,650 of them had been tried in the courts. Of this total, 25.6 per cent were acquitted, whilst 2 per cent were never charged (Hillyard & Percy-Smith 1985: 345). So effective was the use of criminal law that it created a situation in which ‘not one trade union dispute since 1979 could possibly have succeeded under the guise or code of conduct that the Tory government placed upon us’ (TUC 1985).

Literature and scope

Unsurprisingly, the developments in policing and the use of criminal law against the miners attracted contemporary commentary; these accounts convey a sense of concern around the prospect that civil liberties were seriously under threat. This article also reflects on the concerns of many contemporary writers that the strike represented a new style of policing that might in the future erode civil liberties. But this work argues from a historical perspective that, in fact, the trajectory of the strike itself, and the defeat of what was representatively the personification of strong trade unionism, was enough to ensure that industrial unionism was rendered impotent after 1985. The narratives that characterise the existing literature, produced during or immediately after the strike, fall into two groups: academics looking in on the situation, and activist groups observing it, often from the picket lines; but both provide a lucid account through which to reflect on the situation. The scope of my exploration, intended to be a reanalysis of the events of thirty years ago, is confined to the state’s treatment of the rank-and-file miners, rather than the union, which also became embroiled with the courts through injunctions and sequestration (Allen 2009: 288). It analyses these works from a historical perspective, and adds to the investigation a range of archival sources, such as newspapers and parliamentary minutes. These sources are married with secondary sources and interviews, largely drawn from documentaries aired around the 25^th anniversary of the strike. Although it is not expected that the conclusions of this exploration will be particularly different to the points that the commentators of the 1980s made, it is hoped that combining these narratives with a contemporary perspective, in light of additional sources, will provide a timely reminder of the role of the state against the miners.

The contemporary accounts reflect the fact that the style of policing, plus the use of the judiciary to impose criminal penalties on trade unionists, was unprecedented. Walker and Miller, writing in June 1984, took issue with the lack of police accountability, the number of arrests and also the ‘campaign of mass criminalisation’ against the miners (Walker & Miller 1984: 24). Roger Benedictus took the view that the government believed that using civil law might only serve to make martyrs of the miners, and so the primacy of criminal law was maintained (Benedictus 1985: 176). East, Power and Thomas argued that the use of the criminal law, instead of the civil law, was designed to ‘criminalise’ the miners, ‘thereby assisting in the presentation of mass picketing as anti-social and a threat to law and order’ (East, Power & Thomas 1985: 303). Bunyan argued that the evolution of policing was designed only to preserve capital (Bunyan 1985: 293). De Friend and Rubin were interested in exploring the exact use of the civil laws and, reflecting the immediacy of their analysis after the event, acknowledged that their findings were ‘tentative’: they concluded that the value of their research was to understand the evidence in relation to civil liberties (De Friend & Rubin 1985). Similarly, Peter Wallington explored the implications of the strike on policing practice for the future, concluding that the developments that were brought about during the miners’ strike had dangerous implications for civil liberties (Wallington 1988).

Preparation

The Conservative’s rationale, which drove it to take on strong unions like the NUM, was backed with a shrewd methodology: Thatcher had been education secretary in Heath’s cabinet when, in 1974, the miners’ strike was commonly held to have caused the administration to lose the general election. The prototype for what would come from 1979 was the leaked 1978 Ridley Report, details of which were published in The Economist. The authors of the report, which aimed to set financial targets for nationalised industries before eventually privatising them, expected a degree of resistance, especially from the miners (Economist 1978). The report advised that the government should stock up power stations with coal, recruit non-union lorry drivers to transport it, cut off benefits to strikers, and recruit a ‘large, mobile squad of specially selected police’ ready to uphold the law against discontented pickets should the need arise (Economist 1978). The Ridley Report also suggested that ‘the eventual battle should be on ground chosen by the Tories’ (Beynon 198: 35).

But the government also set about constructing a framework of civil law to curtail trade union militancy. The Employment Acts of 1980 and 1982 limited union power, and they also provided civil recourse to those workers whose work was disrupted by strikes (East et al. 1985: 305). The 1980 Act made some restrictions to union power, particularly around the closed shop, but it also restricted picketing rights: this would be a highly effective step against the NUM, which had won the 1972 miners’ strike largely through mass picketing. The 1980 Act permitted picketing ‘at or near’ one’s place of work for the purpose of ‘peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working’, and if these conditions were breached, then nothing ‘shall prevent an act done in the course of picketing from being actionable in tort’ (Employment Act 1980). It also removed the civil immunity trade unions had held from 1906 (McIlroy 1985: 101). The 1982 Act, with its associated Code of Practice, strengthened the government’s executive power. It also allowed trade unionists to bring action against their own union, if the union had authorised the strike action (McIlroy 1985: 102). Financially, the 1980 amendment to the Supplementary Benefits legislation severely cut benefits for both those who chose to strike (Beckett & Hencke 2009: 141). In the event, the use of policing and criminal sanctions in 1984-85 ensured that these civil frameworks were rarely used (De Friend & Rubin 1985).

Policing in a new context

Although the Conservative government had prepared for industrial strife through the creation of a civil framework, policing had also been evolving because of broader contextual events: the troubles in Northern Ireland, along with the inner-city riots of 1981, had caused a re-evaluation of British policing, a seed that had initially been planted following the industrial militancy of the early 1970s (East et al. 1985: 293). In 1981, the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure had recommended a unified code of practice for police forces, although the resultant Police and Criminal Evidence Act was delayed by the cost of policing the miners’ strike (Jones 1985). But there were other changes in place by 1984. The main impact of the National Recording Centre (NRC), set up following the 1972 miners’ strike but only used briefly in the 1974 strike and the 1981 inner-city riots, was that it created a network whereby forces could assist each other if they faced major disturbances. Douglas Hurd, Thatcher’s secretary of state, described it as a system whereby chief police officers could ‘request assistance from their colleagues’ (Hansard 1984). The NRC was publicly a centralised system of managing the police; but privately, Peter Wright, South Yorkshire’s Chief Constable, referred to it as an ‘arm of the government’ (Adeney & Lloyd 1986: 101).

It was not just the police’s ability to call on their colleagues that ensured the state would have the strength to curtail mass unrest: training methods and tactics were also developed. Special Patrol Groups (SPGs) allowed police to use a ‘para-military force’ to police not only industrial unrest, but also inner cities (Bunyan 1985: 295). Their numerical strength had developed quite impressively throughout the 1970s: in 1973, there were only five SPG groups across England, Scotland and Wales; but by 1977, there were 23 groups (Bunyan 1985: 295). In the same year, police used riot shields on the mainland for the first time, whilst policing a National Front demonstration (Bunyan 1985: 296). The full capacity of this somewhat reformed, and sophisticated, police force was clearly demonstrated in 1983, in the National Graphical Association’s strike in Warrington, where police used CS gas, batons and a generally tougher form of policing (McCabe & Wallington 1984: 4).

The Warrington strike also demonstrated the impressive mobility of the new police force through the use of Police Support Units (PSUs), groups of officers trained specifically to deal with public order offences, who were removed from their ordinary duties in order to train and attend disturbances. The PSU’s Tactical Operation Manual (also known as the Public Order Tactical Operations), which The Guardian alleged permitted officers to use ‘illegal paramilitary tactics’, further centralised policing (Guardian 1985). The Tactical Operation Manual set out certain manoeuvres that could be used when police were presented with a ‘riotous and potential riotous gathering’: for instance, manoeuvre number 6 suggested that officers might need to use baton charges, ‘striking in a controlled manner with batons about the arms and legs or torso so as not to cause serious injury’ (Wallington 1985: 5). It suggested dispersing crowds by using mounted police to canter at groups, whilst officers followed on foot (East et al. 1985: 312). Although the Tactical Operation Manual was used in the 1981 riots in Brixton and Toxteth, its existence had been covert, with only members of the Association of Chief Police Officers being privy to its existence. It was only in June 1985, during the defence of 14 miners who had been accused of rioting during the picketing of the Orgreave coking plant in June 1984, that the existence of the guide became public knowledge (Wallington 1985: 5).

Unity and disunity

The effect of these policing reforms was to create a highly mobile and versatile policing unit that could be deployed to any required area or situation, quickly. For example, just eight days into the miners’ strike, 3,000 police, drawn from 17 forces across the country, were already stationed in the Nottinghamshire area of the NUM (McCabe & Wallington 1988: 69). The greater uniformity in policing measures ensured that the officers were versatile and responsive to whatever threat they encountered: police could transcend force boundaries and still be quickly familiar with the level of threat that they were likely to face and how to respond to it. The officers’ ability to apply the tougher style of policing was enhanced by the addition of police who were not from the same geographical location as the miners they were meant to be monitoring. For example, the Metropolitan Police, whose officers would ordinarily not have encountered miners, were responsible for 189 arrests at Orgreave, third only behind Nottinghamshire and South Wales officers (Hillyard 1985: 348). They added a powerful dimension to policing the strike. At Thurcroft on 2 October, 12 of a total of 27 PSU units were drawn from the Metropolitan police, whilst at Kiveton Park on 5 October, 17 of 42 PSU units were from the Metropolitan police (Beynon 1985: 300).

But it was not only in arrest rates that the mobility the centralised system had created proved to be effective against the miners: the use of road blocks, often manned by PSUs, was particularly effective at preventing any repeat of the miners’ 1972 victory, where the mobility of the pickets was essential. The police’s own official statistics note that road blocks caused 164,508 ‘presumed pickets’ to turn back on their journey during the first 27 weeks of the strike (Wallington 1985: 300). This allowed the police to physically control the numbers of miners that could apply pressure on their non-striking colleagues. But some miners suggest that road blocks, rather than being used as a defensive tactic, were also used offensively by the police. In the case of Orgreave, carloads of pickets were ‘waved through’ without question by the police, which was unusual. They were then met by over 8,000 police officers, and a violent battle ensued (East et al. 1985: 309). The more aggressive style of policing was also evident in the use of horses, but particularly in the use of police dogs. Canines had been deemed, in various reports from the 1970s, to be unsuitable for riots or industrial meetings. The perception that in these situations, the animal had the potential to be as ‘dangerous as a loaded firearm’, did not stop the use of police dogs at Orgreave (East et al. 1985: 309). Reports claim that not only were police dogs present, but that the animals were also allowed off their leads and permitted to bite miners (East et al. 1985: 310).

Despite the potential for a unified police force that I have just sketched out, some divisions over policing, both in theory and practice, permeated all levels of the police force. The Guardian reported that the Association of Chief Police Officers and individual chief constables were constantly arguing over the cost and logistics of implementing the centralised force (The Guardian 1984). Disunity was also apparent between officers on the frontline, largely because officers from mining areas were conscious that they would need to continue policing, if not living in, mining communities once their colleagues from other forces had left. Pat McLoughlin, a former policeman interviewed in 2002, recalled how two officers from a force outside of the dispute area were holding a miner in a headlock and beating him. When McLoughlin confronted them, it almost caused an altercation between the officers (McLoughlin 2002: 44-70). It is probable that officers from outside the area were emotionally removed from the context in which they were working: there was no difference in the instructions given. McLoughlin confirms that even local officers were instructed to use the same tactics as visiting forces (McLoughlin 2002: 44-70). McLoughlin claims that his own force was explicitly instructed to use truncheons as an offensive, rather than defensive, weapon in order to ‘prevent further injuries and assault’ (McLoughlin 2002: 44-70).

Practical policing

Within this analysis, it must be acknowledged that some of the policing methods that were used during the strike were genuinely defensive. It was reported that more than 400 officers were assaulted in the nine months of the strike in 1984, compared to 40 reported in total across the whole of 1983 (Class War 1984). The Guardian, in August 1984, reported how officers had answered a hoax 999 call at Wakefield Theatre Club, only to find 800 miners awaiting their arrival, who then proceeded to, amongst other things, turn a police car upside down (The Guardian 1984). MacGregor recalled reports of how officers found themselves at the mercy of miners’ ‘booby traps’, including the rapid rolling of a telegraph pole down a hill towards the police lines or stones thrown at officers (MacGregor 1986: 30). Just as it is difficult to discern who was responsible for any police violence, so too was this the case with miners: activists, over whom the union had no control, often infiltrated the picket lines (Allen 2009: 284). But it is clear to see that the violence the police responded to justified their ability to further increase the severity of their policing tactics. In picket-led violence, the situation escalated in its severity. In Rossington, for example, the result of this situation was the handing out of ‘restorative justice’ by the police (Callinicos 1985: 163). In Grimethorpe, the level of violence the police presence caused was serious enough for the Assistant Chief Constable to apologise to residents (Beckett & Hencke 2009: 256). These kind of accounts were still in circulation in 2009. A BBC documentary, comprising a collection of interviews to coincide with the 25^th anniversary of the strike, recalled how one miner launched a brick at an officer whilst picketing Hatfield Colliery in August 1984. The officer involved maintained that he and his colleagues utilised ‘reasonable and proportionate force’ against the miner, which resulted in him being arrested, charged and imprisoned, suffering a convulsion, and not having worked since (BBC 2009).

Other methods of policing shied away from heavy-handed tactics: allegations of police intimidation also characterise the literature. One miner was stopped at a road block and told that if he continued on foot he would be arrested. When he refused to hand over his keys, he had his windscreen smashed (Walker & Miller 1984: 25). There was also an incident of a miner being stopped at a road block and told that he could not continue as his vehicle was damaged. When the miner asked what the problem was, the policeman smashed the brake light of his car (Walker & Miller 1984: 25). Another miner, from Markham Colliery, was hit on the back of the head while trying to help a fellow picket and ‘left to bleed for a bit’, before being taken to hospital (The Militant 1984). There were also accusations of snatch squads, which removed the most militant miners from the picket lines to ensure that they would be removed from further picketing activities during the strike (Walker & Miller 1984: 33; East et al. 1985: 305). There were also reports of questioning in police stations being based on political lines (Labour Research Department 1984). Miners also reported being taunted by police, particularly as the strike rolled into its later months and poverty became a real issue: as one miner from Maerdy recalled, ‘Coppers were showing off £20 and £50 notes and waving them at us. They said, “Look at this! We’re getting overtime off you bastards.”’ Another miner was told by the arresting officers at Orgreave, ‘I hope you’re not going to plead guilty – I want some overtime’(East et al. 1985: 307).

Accountability

In the tumultuous environment of a contentious picket line, the usual accountability of the police was diminished. McLoughlin recalls, ‘We were told – obviously unofficially – “They can’t throw stones if they’ve got broken arms,” and we were also told not to worry too much about any allegations of assault that might be made against us’ (McLoughlin 2002: 60). Even the upper echelons of the police were aware that, in this pressured environment, some police officers lost their tempers. Wright confirmed that he had seen pictures of police losing their tempers and using their truncheons, a disciplinary offence (The Times 1984). But the chance of any justice for miners who found themselves on the receiving end of this loss of temper was an unlikely prospect. At Orgreave, even Scargill was arrested and injured: Routledge claims the he aimed to get himself arrested to show his empathy with the miners (Routledge 1998: 150). But his experience proves the difficulty of trying to hold any police officers to account for their actions. Although Scargill claimed that he was hit on the back of the head with a shield, the Assistant Chief Constable preferred to claim that Scargill ‘slipped off the top of a bank and hit his head on a sleeper’ (The Times 1984). In this context, only 549 complaints against the police were made during the strike, although none of these led to disciplinary action or criminal proceedings against the police (Wallington 1985: 9). Although there is, as we have seen, an abundance of miners happy to discuss their experiences retrospectively, the Yorkshire area of the NUM, at least, encouraged its members to avoid complaining against the police in 1984 (Wallington 1985: 9).

Policing the police

Faced with not being able to do much about the method of policing, the result was observation and critical commentary of the events by commentators, rather than by the miners themselves. The Sheffield Policewatch Report of April to October 1984 was an independent body whose members visited and observed over 200 picket lines, wearing identifying badges. Since they were observers of the strike rather than protagonists in it, they were able to follow and record events as they unfolded, without being caught up in the tempestuous atmosphere of the picket line. At Croule and Thurcroft, on 24 July 1984 and 2 August 1984 respectively, the report suggested that police attacked miners who were picketing peacefully (Sheffield Policewatch Report 1984). At Wellbeck colliery, Policewatch members reported that some miners were arrested for shouting the word ‘scab’ (Sheffield Policewatch Report 1984). Orgreave gave rise to Policewatch claims that miners, who were outnumbered by police, were held down whilst being beaten (Sheffield Policewatch Report 1984). Paradoxically, it was associations outside of the union that were most vocal about the way the strike was being policed. The Trade Union Congress report of 1984 called for the police to never be used again ‘against unarmed working people exercising traditional trade union rights’ (Trade Union Congress 1984). The National Council for Civil Liberties found a similar scene during its 1984 interim report, which it had undertaken in order to investigate ‘the most serious disruption to police and community relations since the Brixton riots’ (Guardian 1984). In light of its findings, the Council’s main concern was that miners were being arrested to simply remove them from the picket lines, and that the police’s behaviour was ‘provocative, insensitive and unprofessional’ (National Council for Civil Liberties 1984).

Judicial impartiality?

Alongside the front-line police, tasked with dealing with the immediate situation, arrested miners needed to be processed through the courts. The Police Review of 1985 claimed that more than 7,917 of the 9,808 miners arrested were charged with an offence, making this a gargantuan task (Beckett & Hencke 2009: 211). The Labour Party noted that ‘our long-respected legal system has been used to destroy the miners’ strike’ (Guardian 1985). The judiciary would usually be removed from witnessing the case under examination, yet coverage of the miners’ strike was everywhere (Schwarz & Fountain 1985). Quantifiably, it was found that press coverage of miners’ violence took up 19 minutes 29 seconds of film, whereas police violence took up only 2 minutes 19 seconds (Taylor 1993: 209). Whilst the press showed large, intimidating groups of miners, only one of seventeen national newspapers showed the now infamous still of a young woman at Orgreave, cowering from a mounted policeman’s truncheon (Beckett & Hencke 2009: 94). The NCB had a sophisticated team of 40 press officers, whereas the NUM had only Nell Myers, Scargill’s loyal and by all accounts formidable secretary (Wade 1985: 275).

Generally, for the public, media saturation had the effect of creating a sense of ‘moral confusion’ as regards the miners’ threat to law and order; but it also had a judicial implication (East et al. 1985: 307). In law, one was entitled to assume, in light of what had happened in similar cases, that an event was probable. As nightly reports of miner-led violence and mass picketing exploded onto the news, there was little to differentiate between miners’ mass pickets on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday; the expected patterns of behaviour became the same. It became the case that it was possible to predict the behaviour of miners, which was permissible in law. In the case Moss v. McLachlan, for example, four striking miners were found guilty in a magistrate’s court of ‘wilfully obstructing an officer in the course of his duty’ because they failed to turn back at a police roadblock (East et al. 1985: 309). Their subsequent appeal in the high court was rejected on the grounds that the original magistrate had convicted them correctly, because it was fair that the police believed that there would be a breach of the peace if the miners had continued on their journey, passing the roadblock (East et al. 1985: 309). Moreover, and ultimately, the police’s word was sufficient evidence in court (Socialist Worker 1984).

The demographics of the judiciary

Along with the perception of what the miners might do, largely based on unequal media coverage of violence around the strike, there was a perennial issue of representation amongst the judiciary. Statistically, based on their backgrounds, there is nothing to suggest that the judges who dealt with the arrested miners might have understood the need to strike to defend jobs. The lack of working-class representation was also true of magistrates, most of whom were, and still are today, retired, white and middle class. Of the 64 judges involved in the dispute, 66 per cent went to public school, and 82 per cent went on to Oxbridge. Their average age was 63.8 years, and 61 per cent had been appointed since Thatcher was elected in 1979 (Labour Research Council 1985: 11). Members of the judiciary were also bound up in much of the sentiment of the late 1970s: the need to curtail militant and disruptive trade unionism. The 1977 book, The Politics of the Judiciary, found that their key values were ‘the maintenance of law and order, the protection of private property, the containment of the trade union movement and the continuation of government’ (Griffith 1977: 71). The need to maintain these values was, by 1984, being carried out across all levels of the judicial hierarchy. The attorney general condemned picketing that was not peaceful or that intimidated others (Hansard 1984). The scope for broad interpretation of what he meant alludes to the fact that any picket, merely by their presence and intention, might be perceived as intimidating. This justification was articulated by Lord Denning, a judge, who was clearly alarmed by what he perceived as anarchy. He worried that ‘our laws are being discredited right and left. The mobs are out’ (McIlroy 1985: 101). Filtering further down the judiciary, David Negus, a Derbyshire solicitor, believed that ‘they [the miners] appear to be the only group in society who believe that they are above the law’ (McIlroy 1985: 117).

The Bail Act

Once the police had removed the most troublesome miners from the picket lines, the judiciary was able to keep them away from the situation. The Labour government had passed the Bail Act of 1976, which became of fundamental importance in 1984-85, in dealing with those who had been arrested (Bail Act 1976). The Act was an effective way to affect the numbers of miners on picket lines, with miners spending an average of 118 days on bail (Walker & Morris 1985: 351). The literature suggests that there was an element of interpretation within the Bail Act that permitted an extension of state control over exactly where picketing could take place. For example, the Act permitted people from picketing at the place of arrest, but the area of picketing was then extended to being only permitted ‘at or near one’s place of work’ (Labour Research Council 1984: 149). As the strike rolled on, there were accounts of miners being stopped from being involved in ‘any form of demonstration’ (East et al. 1985: 303). The Bail Act was often also used for miners whose offence was a summary offence, and presented to a magistrate in order to keep them off the picket lines (McCabe & Wallington 1988: 98). The Act stipulated that bail should be refused only if it was believed that the defendant might fail to surrender to bail; commit an offence; or otherwise interfere with the course of justice – but, even when bailed, restrictions and conditions prevented miners from re-joining the picket lines (East et al. 1985: 303).

Martin Walker suggested that by June 1984, there was a backlog of miners waiting to be tried by the courts – miners who were in prison awaiting trial for offences which did not even carry a custodial sentence (Walker 1985: 65). Due to the sheer volume of arrested miners with whom the judicial system needed to deal, the length of bail was often extended as the hearing was put back (Socialist Worker 1984). Faced with a backlog of miners, who could only be held for 72 hours, many pickets reported being granted bail en masse: one miner recalled being dealt with as a group of six, another as a group of twenty (East et al. 1985: 303). The method of dealing with arrested miners also increased in its severity as the strike continued. Miners were generally fined or ‘bound over’, but as the dispute progressed, and particularly coinciding with the winter ‘Back to Work’ NCB initiative, the use of charges that carried a custodial sentence – for instance, that of unlawful assembly – increased dramatically (Beckett & Hencke 2009: 353; Labour Research Council 1985: 62). The government also resurrected the 1875 Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, which carried the offence of ‘besetting’, and gave 226 miners fines or three-month custodial sentences (Labour Research Department 1984: 22). Three Doncaster miners who were charged under this offence received bail conditions that were condemned by the National Association of Probation Officers as ‘extremely harsh and almost unparalleled’: the miners could not contact each other, were on an 8am-8pm curfew, had to report to the police daily, and were banned from Nottinghamshire (McIlroy 1985: 113).

Endured penance

Although approximately a third of all charged miners were subsequently acquitted following trial, the repercussions of their arrests remained (Hillyard & Perry-Smmith 1985: 365). Once miners had been criminalised, they could be dismissed from their employment by the NCB (Walker 1985: 65). The North West Miners’ Defence Campaign reported that many miners were subsequently dismissed, either because they had a criminal record or because of offences they had committed whilst on the picket line (1984). Even for those re-employed, their actions during the strike had long-term consequences. One miner had worked for the NCB for thirty years, and had built up a good pension, but he stole a bag of coal dust from the NCB during the strike. He was sacked and eventually reemployed, not reinstated, which ensured that he lost his £11,000 service money (The Militant 1985). The personal impact of these kinds of decisions on men who had been without strike pay, destitute, and largely reliant on union funds, which by the end of the strike had been sequestrated, was an effective means of persuading the destitute miners to return to work (Wallington 1985: 4; Booth & Smith 1985; Jones & Novak 1985: 87). It was in the Ridley Report that the suggestion to ‘cut off the money supply to the miners and make the union finance them’ was first made (Beynon 1985: 35). The government had originally built up a framework of civil penalties to limit trade unions, but the use of criminal law proved to be not only effective in dealing with the immediate situation, but also in the future. Criminal sanctions were much more difficult to overcome for the people who found themselves penalised in this way: they ensured a long-term penalty, even after the strike had ended, and created something of a social stigma. Miners who were alert to this might, as the government probably hoped, use the deferred implications of their actions in the strike to act moderately when on the picket lines or, even better, return to work.

Conclusions: Thirty years on

This article has discussed an industry and an incident that, for many, is within living memory, yet the very industry it was fought to save is now almost obsolete. In 1984 there were 170 coal mines; twenty years later, there were just 13 (ITV 2004). For some protagonists, relations between police and the mining communities are irreparable, as reflected in the quotation that opens this article. The ethos of ‘respect and co-operation’ that many miners had held, particularly for police who were often also from working-class backgrounds, had fundamentally shifted by April 1985 (Guardian 1985). This change was to be a generational breakdown: one Doncaster miner explained how, following the strike, ‘even our kids have grown to hate the coppers’ (Goodman 1985: 126). Another, an elderly miner from Durham, said that he had ‘never been so frightened in his life. I used to respect the police, but never again’ (The Militant 1985). One miner explained, ‘before the strike, I’d have helped a copper, but now if I saw one being attacked I’d look the other way’ (The Militant 1985). One of the primary concerns of those writing about the strike in its immediate aftermath was that the new style of policing would encroach on civil liberties in the future, particularly in subsequent industrial disputes. But so effective was the apparatus of the state against the miners that the end of the strike in 1985 sent a clear message to other trade unions: that if they tried to protect jobs or pursue wages, they might expect the same treatment. By the time the 1980s writers had considered the question of the implications for civil liberties in industrial relations, traditional trade union militancy had already been dealt a fatal blow.