45.Monday May 14th, 1984.

Today has been the most frustrating and disappointing day of the strike so far, and also the most violent!

Scargill had called for a mass demonstration in Mansfield to show the strength of the strike, and to show support for the 11,000 Notts men out on strike with us. Our Lodge officials responded by providing ONE coach, leaving a lot of the regular pickets disappointed. Fortunately Ian Wilburn had helped to organise an extra coach through Newcastle SWP to show our officials they aren’t the only ones who can organise, and that the SWP isn’t just interested in selling papers.

There were only 15 of us and the bus turned up late so we didn’t have time to round up more people, which was disappointing. The men on the union coach were each given £5 subsistence allowance so we decided to do the same out of the money we’d collected in Manchester. We’ll try and claim it back off the Lodge later.

We caught up with the Newcastle Poly coach at a service station and that was full. The guy who had organised the coaches, Simon, told us he was having trouble getting the Labour Party and Militant members on board to contribute towards the cost of our coach. I offered to pay for it from our funds but Simon refused and said he’d sort it.

We arrived in Mansfield at 11am and asked the driver to return at 4pm. The rally was to start from a community centre and return there after we’d marched through the streets of Mansfield. The car park of the centre was jam packed with dozens of colourful banners  and we pushed our way through to our Lodge banner. There were lots of surprised faces amongst the Westoe men when we showed up. I was shocked when Tommy Wilson and his henchmen gathered around Ian Wilburn and Keith Smoult and threatened to beat them up! They said nothing to me but there was a very hostile atmosphere and I warned Ian and Keith to stay well clear of Tommy and his thugs. The only reason I can think of for Tommy’s reaction is that he’s a union official and perhaps felt his authority had been challenged. Whatever, it was totally out of order and completely over the top.

The march set off and was a wonderful sight, with ‘Victory to the Miners’ placards everywhere. Ian, Keith and myself kept to the edge of the march so we could sell Socialist Worker, and keep out of Tommy’s way. I quickly sold all my papers and so did Ian and Keith. One thing that was very noticeable was the low profile of the pigs, though there were helicopters buzzing constantly overhead. I felt tremendously proud as we marched through the crowded streets of Mansfield and felt that such a huge display of solidarity couldn’t be ignored by the Notts scabs. My pride soon turned to embarrassment as a large group of lads began chanting,’Get your tits out for the lads,tits out for the lads’ at some young shopgirls leaning out of a window. To make it worse there were lots of Women’s Support Groups present. I tried to shout at the lads to stop but only got verbal abuse in response, except for one lad who said it was ‘only a bit of fun, a laugh, and anyway the lasses love it’. They just couldn’t see anything wrong with their behaviour but how can we expect women to support us if we treat them with such disrespect? I was relieved when the chant changed to, ‘Piggy,piggy,piggy,oink,oink,oink’, a variation on the ‘Maggie’ chant. At least it was aimed at an enemy.

As we marched back into the car park I decided to stay at the entrance to see if I could spot any familiar faces. It was wonderful to see all the different support groups and banners and I felt very encouraged. A young woman approached me and tried to sell me a copy of, ‘The Next Step’, the paper of the Workers Revolutionary Party. When I looked at the front cover I was shocked to see the headline was calling for a national ballot to unite the miners! I advised her to join Militant, or the Tory party but she continued to argue that a ballot was the only way to unite the miners. About as revolutionary as Neil Kinnock! I think RCP stands for the Ray Chadburn Party. The woman was very persistant until I was forced to swear to get rid of her.

I was relieved to meet up with Phil Ramsall and Irene Davis and we stood discussing which pits would be mass picketed because we felt this was the real reason for the rally. As the speeches began I was totally gobsmacked to hear Scargill introducing Tony Benn as,’The greatest Energy Minister we have ever had’. I couldn’t believe my ears because it was Benn who introduced the divisive Incentive Scheme, despite a national ballot rejecting it two to one. That’s ballots for you! In my opinion it is the Incentive Scheme which has caused the Notts miners to scab because they earn huge bonuses in their nice thick seams. At Westoe we earn next to nothing for working 7 miles out under the North Sea in wet conditions and relatively thin seams. Benn is a misguided fool who believes all we have to do is vote in a few hundred left wing MP’s like him and we’ll have some kind of Socialist Utopia. Bollocks! Scargill gave out his usual fighting rhetoric but made no call for a mass picket. Very disappointing.

Speeches over we headed to a nearby pub for some dinner. We had fish and chips and a pint before Phil and Irene had to leave. I joined some of the students from Newcastle Poly who were sitting with some Westoe lads. Two of the students, Brenda and Joan turned the discussion to the sexist chants on the march, and said they were,’Fucking disgusting and fucking demeaning’. One of the lads responded by saying,’If you were my wife I’d give you a good hiding for using foul language like that’! I could see Brenda was really angry and I tried to diffuse the situation by chipping in with,’How would you feel if I asked your wife or daughter to get their tits out?’ One of the lads jumped up, really offended, and Brenda jumped up, even more offended. Thankfully the landlord called ‘time’ and ordered us all out. In the bogs we heard some lads saying that Scargill had done a deal with the pigs that had allowed the rally to go ahead in exchange for no picketing. I didn’t want to believe that one but it did explain the low police presence and the absence of a call for mass picketing. The news had reported that there were over 40,000 people present, and if they’d gone to picket we could have shut down Notts completely. To me it was a missed opportunity.

We left the pub and were strolling towards the car park, enjoying the sunshine. Suddenly we heard glass braking and saw a mob of riot police in full gear appearing from behind the community centre and started beating up two lads, kicking and punching them. We all started shouting and running towards the lads intending to help them but were stopped in our tracks by the sight of mounted police on huge horses galloping out of the community centre, clubbing anyone who got in their way. I was momentarily frozen but the sight of a man falling to the ground with blood pouring from his head shook me into life and I started to run across the road to a church doorway. I remember thinking they couldn’t touch me there because it as sanctuary. Daft! People were shouting and screaming and scattering in all directions as they tried to avoid the horses. I watched in shock from the church doorway as a woman with a pushchair was hit and fell to the ground, the pushchair falling over and her child screaming! Not one of the pigs following the horses stopped to help her. They were too busy hitting anyone they could catch! They were dressed all in black with crash helmets, plastic shields and truncheons. I ran out and helped the woman and her child into the doorway, then ran out again to help a man covered in blood back to safety. It was a massacre, and as far as I could see, totally unprovoked. It looked like a battlefield.

Eventually we felt safe enough to make our way back to the car park where coaches were constantly moving out. I spotted some Westoe lads and ran to join them. The lads told me that everyone had been told to leave by 3.30 and anyone left would be arrested and charged with rioting! Someone had gone to find our coach whilst our party grew by the minute as people returned, each with their own horror story to tell. There were pigs everywhere, pushing people about and shouting at people to leave, arresting people for no reason.

We were very relieved when our coach arrived and the pigs started to roughly push us on board. We did a head count and were relieved to find no one was missing. We let on a load of lads from Doncaster whose coach had gone. One lad was hiding under the back seat because pigs were after him. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief when we hit the M1 and left Mansfield behind.

One of the Yorkshire lads told me that a lad had been wearing a toy cops tit helmet and some pigs started laying into him. His mates retalliated by throwing bottles at them. That’s when the riot police appeared, a real life Trojan Horse.

A cynic might say that because this all happened as the pubs were closing the pigs could justify their actions by blaming ‘drunken hooligans’ who left them no option but to respond as they had, and then make an example of those arrested to discourage others from coming to Notts.

Another cynic might ask what all those pigs and horses were doing in a community centre in the first place? Marx said,’Political power is the organised power of one class for oppressing another’. It’s about time we started oppressing them for a change!!!

33. Saturday April 28th, 1984.

For some strange reason today was designated May Day in Newcastle and a march and rally had been organised to mark the event. The SWP were out in force selling Socialist Worker and handing out hundreds of ‘Victory to the Miners’ placards, especially to the miners present though a lot of them ripped off the SWP logo at the top which I found petty and ungrateful. I had brought along a plastic bucket covered in ‘Coal Not Dole’ stickers to collect for the Westoe Miners Wives Support Group. Ian Wilburn had brought up a van full of women to collect as well, and to attend the rally.

As we stood talking we were approached by a Northumberland NUM official who asked me what I intended doing with the bucket. His tone gave me a few ideas but I contented myself with telling him the truth. To my amazement he said I was not allowed to collect on behalf of the miners. Here we go again I thought. I told him I was a striking miner and he demanded to know where I was from. I could have shown him my letter of authorisation from the Lodge but his belligerent tone really got my back up so I told him to mind his own business, and anyway, how did I know HE was a miner? This plainly shocked him because like a lot of union officials they have an inflated sense of their own importance. He told me who he was in an offended tone whilst a group of tough looking Northumberland miners gathered around him. A very angry exchange of words took place, culminating in him threatening to have me arrested if I made any attempt to collect. That did shock me and I asked him why he was so against me collecting. He said, ‘The Northumberland miners do not go begging or accept charity’. I pointed out that I was not one of his men and that it wasn’t begging but asking fellow workers to support us in our fight. I added that he’d better get used to it because it could be a long strike and we would need all the help we could get if we were to beat Thatcher and her boot boys. He just repeated his threat and said he had been fighting for his members since before I was born and there was nothing I could tell him about strikes. With that him and his henchmen stormed off to take their places at the front of the march. Anne Kendrick said he might be able to have me arrested but he wouldn’t dare do it to them so they decided to do the collecting.

We marched proudly through the streets of Newcastle cheered on by the shoppers. The rally was held in Leazes Park and we arrived there in brilliant sunshine and found a place to sit and listen to the speeches and to count the money the lasses had collected.

The speeches were full of the usual rhetoric from a poor selection of speakers, and it was only when Denis Murphy, the President of the Northumberland miners, got up to speak did I pay any attention. First of all he claimed that Thomas Hepburn was a Northumberland miner when in fact he was a Durham miner and founded one of the first ever unions in 1832. Then he claimed his men were the best in the coalfields and had been solidly behind the strike since day one. Wrong again because we had to picket the buggers out at Ellington. I don’t mean to sound petty but facts are facts.

The biggest shock came when Tom Sawyer of NUPE came onto the platform and presented Murphy with a cheque for £20,000! For a union who ‘doesn’t accept charity’ this struck me as the height of hypocrisy and I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I rushed to the front of the platform and shouted, ‘I thought the Northumberland miners didn’t accept charity?’ Anne Kendrick joined in the attack, much to the concern of some officials who came running over to us and begged us to stop in the name of solidarity. We shut up and returned to our group because we’d made our point. However, I was still furious at the hypocrisy of that bloody official threatening to have me arrested for collecting coins whilst they eagerly accepted a cheque for twenty grand! bastards!

As the speeches ended we began to leave but a furious woman started shouting at me, accusing me of trying to use the women for my own political ends! When I learned she was Geoff Price’s wife the attack made more sense but was still laughable. Militant indeed.

Before I left the park I saw a stand run by the Newcastle Gay and Lesbian Group that made tin badges to order with a little machine they had. They offered to make me badges for a cut price 10p each if I would sign a petition supporting them. I would have signed it anyway but had 20 badges made that said,’Westoe Miners – Zulu Pickets’. I intend selling them for 20p each, with the profit going into the ‘pie fund’. They told me they’ll make more at the same price but I’ll see how these go first.

I made my way down to Jarrow where Neil Kinnock was unveiling a plaque on the Metro station to commemorate the famous Jarrow Marchers. When I arrived I met up with comrades from the SWP and we watched Kinnock pose for pictures with three old men who were amongst the last survivors of the march before making a short speech and unveiling the plaque. He then set off with his entourage to march through Jarrow to a community centre where he was due to speak. We were disgusted to see one of the old men was left standing on the platform, alone, with no one taking any notice of him, poor sod, so a couple of comrades went to get him a taxi whilst we ran to carch up with the march. The old man had served his purpose and then been abandoned. So much for socialism eh?

We caught up and positioned ourselves right behind Kinnock and the other so called dignitaries, proudly carrying our ‘Victory to the Miners’ placards. I have quite a loud voice, some would call it a big mouth, and I used it to good effect, shouting at Kinnock to get off the fence and support the miners, repeating it until he disappeared inside the sanctuary of the community centre. Our Lodge banner and officials were directly behind and the look on their faces told me exactly what they felt about my performance. Still, I expect they got their chance to suck up to Kinnock inside whilst I went home to sleep soundly in my bed.