Britain: Pit Stops

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A miners' strike turns ugly

The first convoy of 35 trucks rumbled out of the plant gates last Tuesday morning carrying low-sulfur coal from the Orgreave coking works, near Sheffield, to a steel mill at Scunthorpe, 40 miles away. With that, Britain's angry, three-month-old miners' strike flared into open war. As the vehicles ran the gauntlet between Orgreave and Scunthorpe, 7,000 picketing miners pelted them with rocks, smoke bombs, ball bearings and nail-studded potatoes. Two thousand policemen charged repeatedly into the crowd on foot and on horseback. By the end of the day, 81 strikers had been arrested and at least 110 people hurt, among them 41 policemen. Thundered Arthur Scargill, 46, president of the powerful National Union of Mineworkers: "There were scenes of brutality that were almost unbelievable."

Only about 500 supporters answered Scargill's plea for an even bigger turnout the following day. Then Scargill was arrested for obstruction at Orgreave's main gate. He was quickly released on bail, but the reaction was nonetheless swift and brutal. Within hours, more than 3,000 demonstrators had gathered, and police charges were meeting stiffer resistance. Lengths of wire were strung across the road at the height of a horse's fetlock and a rider's neck. Telephone poles were ripped down and used as battering rams against police lines. The authorities and some miners blamed the renewed violence on hardline Marxist infiltrators.

The strike had entered a dangerous new phase of which the outcome could not be predicted. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher condemned the "violence and intimidation" at Orgreave, but her government stayed carefully on the sidelines. The National Coal Board, whose plans to close unproductive pits and trim 20,000 of 180,000 jobs in the industry had touched off the conflict, stood by its policies but left the way open for a negotiated settlement. Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock attacked Thatcher's handling of the crisis but conspicuously avoided making the strike a party cause: the walkout is unpopular with many of Labor's moderate voters. In forcing last week's confrontations, Scargill seemed to be making a bold bid to shore up support in the face of rapidly dwindling strike funds. But his flamboyant intransigence made him seem less interested in saving jobs than in taking on the government.

Coal Board Chairman Ian MacGregor appeared determined to reach a settlement with the miners' union. Yet there was little progress when Scargill met with the Coal Board on Thursday. The union chief continued to insist that the pit closures are not negotiable; the Coal Board said only that it would reframe its plans to streamline the industry.