6 th OCTOBER "19 84 ‘\ r 1'1" ... 4.4 T r T1‘ l .1 '1‘ . ,¢uI-

CHRONOLOGY IREGACTION fro e‘grassroots’

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MINERS In nearby Armthorpe pickets build a 21ST SEPTEMBER An estimated AND THEIR FAMILIES ARE TAKING large barricade and set it alight. 6,000 pickets take action at Maltby POSITIVE AND IMAGINATIVE DIR- Police cut off the village, baton Colliery as 7 construction workers ECT ACTION TO FURTHER THEIR pickets , break into people’s homes, enter the pit. Miners barri- I STRUGGLE. HERE WE LIST SOME and generally terrorise the whole cade and block the road into the OF THESE ACTIVITIES, IN THE community. colliery for 3 hours. The police say‘ HOPE OF ENCOURAGING MORE they faced “ a continuous barrage of Pickets at barricade missiles”. 2 SUCH ACTIONS. the pit entrance with an overturned colliery van and Coal Board bus. Miners succeed in limiting arrests to . 3RD AUGUST. 200 pickets raid a NCB property in the Colliery is dam- Coal Board transport depot at South aged. Miners build a barricade and 5 , by retreating when police advance, Normanton in Derbyshire, damaging set it ablaze at the gates of the then resuming the offensive. A - 14 lorries and 2 coaches. , . ( Information: Daily Telegraph, ( source Scotsman 4/8, Black In Durham a mass picket successfully Daily Record) Flag 20 /8) prevents a solitary scab entering 8TH AUGUST. Using CB radio to Easington colliery. co-ordinate their actions, hundreds 22ND SEPTEMBER. 40 pickets and ( Information: Guardian and Scots- supporters burst into a police station of miners attack Coal Board property man 23 /8, Black Flag Autumn 84) at 3 places in Yorkshire and Notting- at Rochester, Kent in a bid to rescue‘ hamshire. First target is Silverhill 30TH AUGUST. South Wales miners a comrade who’d been arrested -and . Colliery, where NCB office windows take direct action to block coal detained. In the ensuing melee 4 are smashed, strikebreakers cars are supplies to steel workers. They people are arrested. damaged, and a police vehicle seize a transporter bridge and use it ( Information: Radio News) rammed. Next stop , to prevent ships passing up the 20 miles away. More damage to NCB River Usk, Newport. C 24TH SEPTEMBER. More mass action and scabs property. at Maltby Colliery near Rotherham as Simultaneously 10 3 miners occupy a 5,000 pickets be seige the pit. Across into Yorkshire for the final British Steel jetty at Port Talbot and target as striaers smash £2,000 climb onto cranes being used to un- ( Information: Glasgow Evening worth of windows at the 11 storey load coal. _ Times) Coal Board offices in . ( Information: FRFI Sept., The 25th SEPTEMBER. Pickers and ( Information: Black Flag 20/8 Miner 21/9) and 3/9, Fight Racism, Fight Union officials persuade a miner to Imperialism ( FRFI) Sept., Class 2ND SEPTEMBER. A Coal Board return home after he went into work < War) . office is demolished with a bulldozer at Wooley Colliery. 12TH AUGUST . 5 Coal Board in an overnight attack. £ 250 ,000 26th SEPTEMBER. Miners block I coaches being fitted out for strike worth of damage caused at Thurncroft roads into Wooley Colliery with breaking are destroyed by fire at Colliery, near Rotherham. rubble and an excavator, to prevent J. Thompson engineering works at ( Information: Guardian and Scots- any strikebreaker entering. Pleasley Vale, North Derbyshire. Man 3/9) (Information: The EXpreSS 23/9) ( Information: Black Flag 3/9 , 5TH SEPTEMBER. Pickets fell 26th SEPTEMBER. Before dawn 300 FRFI Sept., Guardian 14/8) trees to block the road used by pol- ice to bring in scabs to Tilmanstone striking miners march through the a Colliery, Kent. gates and take over the York shire pit for more than 22ND AUGUST. Mass actions by ( Information: Guardian 6/9) pickets throughout Yorkshire. At 6 hours. They occupy the coal prep- miners use a 10 TH SEPTEMBER. The main aration plant and the two winding crane from the pit yard to block the A645 road is closed for over 2 hours towers. Police arrest 43 miners as road with concrete blocks, and hijack as around 4 ,000 pickets attempt to they leave, but they are later releas- an excavator to help build the barri- prevent 2 strikebreakers from entering ed. cade. At the colliery yard pickets Kellingley Colliery, . ( Information: Yorkshire Evening I smash TV cameras, floodlights and (Information: Daily Telegraph‘ 7/9) Post 26/9, Newsline 28/B) office windows. s I 27 th SEPTEMBER. Over 4,000 BILSTON GLEN -- DIGGER DUMPED SECRET SERVICE pickets erect 2 barricades to prevent On September 21st pickets persuaded strikebreakers entering Allerton There have been several reports of a lorry driver transporting a JCB soldiers secretly participating in Bywater colliery in Yorkshire. With digger not to enter this Lothian pit. the main village street blocked for police actions against the miners, Miners suspect that the digger was to e.g. in North Yorkshire, in Scotland 4 hours, it is well over 3 hours past load coal onto lorries -- which would their usual starting time before the 5 at a miners demo in London. Some then be used to take coal out of the Kent miners believe the numbers of scabs can clock on. As the miners pit, to power stations, etc. disperse, police attack and assault soldiers involved may well be in the pickets, making 6 arrests. ( Information: pickets at Bilston hundreds, if not thousands. Glen, September 19 84) ( Information: Newsline 28/9 , A. year or two back there was a local Guardian 28/9 , Yorkshire Evening KENT CLAMPDOWN controversy in Kent when it was re- vealed that the authorities had pur- 1 Post 27 /9) Miners in a transit van were stopped chased 2,000 extra, seemingly by police while following a bus 28th SEPTEMBER. Pickets build a carrying strikebreakers to Tilmanstone totally unnecessary, police uniforms. barricade and halt a police convoy on Colliery, Kent. Four of the miners Ratepayers raged at this ‘absurd its way to , South were arrested and held in detention waste of money’. Yorkshire. Police vehicles are pelted for TEN DAYS. with missiles and two vans are over- Now rumour has it that a thousand of turned. Police set dogs on the pickets Meanwhile residents of Elvington, these uniforms have been delivered and make 5 arrests. Kent have held a meeting to protest to the army at Connaught Barracks,‘ about the police occupation of their Dover, Kent... ( Information’ G. Guardian 29 /9) village - residents have been arrest- ( Information: Kent miners picket- 1st OCTOBER. Just after midnight ed for the ‘crime’ of standing on the ing the NCB HQ in London, Sept.) pickets ambush a police patrol car pavement. near Manton colliery. Later pickets ( Information: Kent miners picket- nearly succeed in breaking through ing the NCB HQ in London, Sept. Posties are refusing to cross the the police lines outside pit. :21 19 84 and ‘The World this Weekend’ miners picket line to deliver mail to arrests. Radio 4, 23 rd September, 19 84) the NCB Head Office in Grosvenor (Information: Glasgow Evening- Place, London. y POLICE HARASSMENT Times I/10) We hope postal workers can keep the miners informed of the alternative 2nd OCTOBER. In the biggest ever Recently police in Bonnyrigg turned addresses to which Coal Board mail picket of Frances Colliery 600 up at the house of an unemployed is directed, so pickets can challenge miners hold up the strikebreakers youth, the son of a miner, and ann- mail deliveries there too. E t minibus. Police re-inforcements ounced he was under arrest ‘for sec- eventuallyforce a way into the Fife ondary picketing at Bilston Glen’. Even better if NCB post was compl- pit for the scabs. 11 arrests, 2 rem- Luckily at that moment his mother etely blacked... or, like Grunw-iclks anded in custody. returned home. After she’d made her mail during that strike, was re-direct feelings known the police left rapidly ed to Australia... i ( Information: Scotsman 3 /10) with burning ears -~ and without a prisoner. i ( Information: Kent miners picket- Occupations, attacks on Coal Board ing NCB HQ in London, September) property, barricading roads, resist- Meanwhile police in the area continue to harass people active in the strike, ance to police oppression - all these I threatening them with arrest and kinds of activities are worrying the - sitting in police cars outside houses Coal. Board, the Government and the P for hours on end. I For not only are such direct actions t ( Information: pickets at Bilston effective, they challenge the very G Glen Sept. 19 84) . ‘rules of the game’. Many miners are EVICTIONS -— READY TO RESIST recognising that the laws, the police lNF0l{MA'l‘l0N and the whole legal system are only Abbey National and the Halifax are This news bulletin was collated as a there to protect the power and wealth among the building societies threaten- service by anarchists and revolution- of the ruling classes. ‘Acceptable ing Lothi an miners with eviction aries from Edinburgh and Clydeside. trade union activity’, as advocated because they can’t pay their mortgage. by Kinnock and Co., means accepting But Bilston Glen pickets say they It is a part of our activity that also THEIR rules, and getting smashed. 1 are ready to take action at striking includes street collections for the miners homes to prevent bailiffs miners and solidarity actions, like a Many, probably most, of the kinds of putting anyone out on the streets. small demonstration in Glasgow on actions we’re talking about seem to October 4th in protest against the be the initiatives of miners and their ( Information: pickets at Bilston Glen, Sept. 19 84) . 10 miners killed in South Africa and families themselves, at the grassroots the 5 miners killed in Britain. level. It’s vital that control and dec- ision making IS exercised by the Please use the information in this And why doesn’t the NUM paper ‘The bulletin as you see fit. ‘grass roots’, NOT by the NUM offic- Miner’ ever report on the kind-of act- ials through the official Union struct- ions we’ve reported here ? ANY NEWS FROM YOUR OWN AREA LIIGS. WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIAT-'r~ Another danger is the NUM channell- ED.. There are indications that the NUM ing all effort into stopping the scabs, leadership is trying to control and/or and neglecting the equally important Write to COUNTERIN FORMATION stop some miners direct action. For task of SPREADING the strike to Box 81, First of May Bookshop, example, the Yorkshire NUM made an other workers. 43 Candlemakers Row, Edinburgh. agreement with the police.The Union would discipline pickets who threw The ability and imagination shown in Printed by the Clydeside Anarchists at Autonomy Press, 6 4 Queen Street missiles, and the police promised not the miners direct actions illustrates to make baton charges. (Needless to that working class people have no Glasgow G1. 3' say, the police battered people as need of leaders to tell us what to do, usual ( Newsline 28th Sept.) whether they’re ‘right’ or ‘left-wing’.

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