Got chatting to Melvin and it turned out we had a lot in common. He had lived for a while at Crossgates in Leeds where I grew up. He too had broken his neck as a result of a roof fall in a coal mine. We exchanged war stories about broken necks and our respective survivals and conversation drifted to the subjects of coal mining - and policing of the coal miners strike.
The police and miners found themselves in daily (or nightly) confrontations ranging from noisy stand-offs to outright bloody conflict. Melvin had been a 100% striking miner. My locus vivendi had been at various times most of the pits around West Yorkshire and one or two in Nottinghamshire. As the strike dragged on we then Superintendents gravitated to allocated pits and mine, week in week out, was Nostell. This meant that you got to know 'your' pit, its facilities and problems. In the case of Nostell it was a large brickworks right alongside the mine - a ready and fearsome source of ammunition. Mercifully we were able to keep the lid on things and bricks were never thrown. (They were though used to build a very fine wall across the pit's main entrance road (below) overnight one night, built by miners and demolished by police officers before the strike-breakers arrived for their shift in their armoured bus).
Would you believe it, Melvin too had been among the pickets at Nostell Colliery!
We had a lengthy natter about those really bad days and nights - and ended up having a good old laugh - and a shaking of hands.
Funny old world.
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