HUNDREDS packed the historic council chamber of the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers in Barnsley on Saturday for its annual memorial lecture.

The strength of feeling in former mining communities 40 years after the epic 1984-5 miners’ strike against pit closures revealed itself at the event to commemorate the deaths of David Jones and Joe Green: Yorkshire miners killed on the picket lines during the strike.

No-one was ever prosecuted over the deaths.