Police keep miners apart

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 10

Police keep miners apart

NZPA-AP Mansfield Mounted police separated striking and non-striking miners at a rally where working miners, protesting against their union’s seven-week-old strike, repeated demands for a national strike vote. Hundreds of police, many on horseback, were deployed to keep miners from other counties away from the rally at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, but about 1500 got past road-blocks and cordons yesterday. When the rival factions came face-to-face, stones and insults were hurled and scuffles broke out before the police stopped them.

The strike over the Staterun National Coal Board’s plans to close 20 moneylosing pits in Britain has driven a deep wedge into the 183,000-member National Union of Mineworkers. While the strike has shut down almost three-quarters of Britain’s 175 mines since it was launched on March 12 by militants in Scotland and Yorkshire, about 40,000 miners in other areas have refused to stop work without a strike vote. In Nottinghamshire, Britain’s second-largest coalfield and centre of resistance to the strike, miners have crossed picket lines this week and all 25

pits have remained in production. In Wivenhoe, Essex, 69 pickets were arrested when they tried to stop the unloading of coal at the town wharf. Arthur Scargill, the union’s president, has pledged to halt coal production this week and says that most miners have “voted with their feet” and that a strike vote is unnecessary. Neil Kinnock, leader of Britain’s Opposition Labour Party, said yesterday that he . supported the Nottighamshire miners’ call for a vote, but urged them to join the strike until it was taken.