Scargill charged on day of clashes

Press, 1 June 1984, Page 8

Scargill charged on day of clashes

NZPA-AP Sheffield The miners’ union leader, Arthur Scargill, and others were arrested on a picket line at the Orgreave coke plant yesterday, and 20 policemen and four pickets were injured in clashes a few hours later. Mr Scargill, pleaded not guilty to a charge of obstructing a public highway, and was released without bail. He was ordered to stand trial on July 10. Magistrates rejected a prosecution appeal that Mr Scargill not be allowed to go within I.6km of the Orgreave plant. The arrests came on the second straight day of the worst violence in the 12-week-old miners’ strike. The Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, accused the miners of trying to “impose the rule of the mob.” Mr Scargill, president of the 183,000-member National Union of Mineworkers, and seven other men were arrested after a scuffle with the police at the plant, where miners are trying to disrupt the shipment of coke supplies. Later policemen had come under a hail of stones, bricks, steel bolts, and pieces of metal pipe from among 3000 pickets, said a police spokesman Sergeant Tom Walton. The miners had dragged a mobile construction-site hut in front of the police line

and set it on fire, he said. Policemen with truncheons and shields moved in and 35 pickets had been arrested. In London, about 40 striking miners burst into the National Coal Board’s headquarters and occupied its first-floor offices, unfurling posters from windows reading “Coal, Not Dole.” They left after about three hours, and no-one was arrested. The miners say that they would rather work than receive unemployment benefits if the Coal Board shuts down unprofitable pits as planned. Mr Scargill is consolidating a reputation as the leading foe of British capitalism, Reuter reports. The agency describes him as a sober-suited revolutionary who spent 20 years as a miner. He is the central figure in the miners’ strike drama. Since he took over the union leadership two years ago he has persistently called for a strike to safeguard the future of an industry with a shrinking work-force. The miners ignored his call, until the Conservative Government brought in a Scottish-born American, lan MacGregor, to head the State-owned Coal Board. Mr MacGregor arrived in September after a threeyear stint at the British Steel Corporation, where he drastically shed jobs. Mr Scargill has rallied

about four-fifths of Britain's miners in a highly politicised struggle against the man he calls the “American butcher.” A rout for the miners would be a bitter defeat for the Left-wing of the Opposition Labour Party and the trade union movement. It would boost the governing Conservatives. Mr Scargill, aged 46, was shaped entirely in his native Yorkshire. His father was a miner and an ardent Communist, and soon after going down the mine Mr Scargill joined the Young Communist League. Before leaving the Communist Party in the early 1960 s he went to Moscow and held talks with the then Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. He came to national attention during the miners’ strike of 1972, when he introduced a tactic called the “flying picket.” He organised a mass picket of about 15,000 men which closed the gates of Saltley Coke depot in the English Midlands. It was a landmark event in British labour history, and prompted laws to curb such picketing. Saltley became a powerful symbol and helped the miners win their strike. In the last week Mr Scargill has referred several times to Saltley as he seeks to repeat a famous victory.