Miners Tactics switch to blockading
November, 1984Striking Yorkshire miners, frustrated by the police's strategy in getting working miners to the pits, have switched tactics away from mass picketing to blockading the pits.
The escalation of violence first seen two days ago when lamp-posts were torn down and barricades were put up at colliery access routes was part of a pre-planned intensification of the conflict, according to reliable sources within the coalfield.
Those tactics were usd again early yesterday when about 600 miners built four separate barricades on the main road leading to Frickley Colliery. The men then stoned police seeking to clear the route so that four men could be bussed in for the first time since the strike began.
Scaffolding poles were taken from a building site to build one barrier and at another barrier garden seats taken from the local social centre park were used to bar the path of the working miners. A considerable police force was deployed, including mounted officers, but they had to use a back road to get through.
Elsewhere in South Yorkshire, a lamp-post was pulled down outside Thurcroft Colliery and timber and stone barricades were put up. A workman's cabin was also pulled across the road. The worst stone-throwing incident was at Rossington, where about 200 pickets gathered to try to prevent working miners entering the pits.
At Hickleton Colliery, between Doncaster and Barnsley, a group of men wearing balaclavas and combat jackets overturned a coal board transit van outside the pit offices and smashed a night security camera before fleeing.
At Worsborough, near Barnsley, the drivers of two security vans were being used to ferry working miners to their pit they were attacked and injured by another group of men.
At Barrow, near Barnsley, trees were pulled up to form a barricade across the road near the pit and a power cable was pulled down, blacking out 2,500 homes in the near by village of Worsbrough where Mr Scargill has his home.
Striking pickets in Celynen South, near Newbridge, South Wales, who are determined to close ranks after some men returned to work, smashed pit head equipment and threw five inch bolts at police yesterday as they tried to prevent men reporting to work.
Source:Times Newspaper
