STRIKING North West miner Stewart Brown talks about his experiences during the strike of 1984-5 as if they were everyday matters — things that just happened.

But even in the annals of that year’s momentous and sometimes horrific events, they were extraordinary. Using an old police bus to transport pickets and getting arrested for kidnap were among them.

Bold colliery outside St Helen’s in Merseyside was a militant pit and its miners supported the strike — a rarity in the north west area of the NUM.

Brown said: “We’d had a 12-month overtime ban. I was ready for the strike. Some of the older miners were ready for retirement and didn’t care what happened. That’s why I was against a ballot.”

Bold’s miners came out when a delegation of pickets arrived from Doncaster in South Yorkshire at the request of Bold’s NUM branch officers.

[[{"fid":"66356","view_mode":"inlineleft","fields":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"PICKET EXPRESS: Miners from Bold Colliery used double-decker buses to ferry troops to the front","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"PICKET EXPRESS: Miners from Bold Colliery used double-decker buses to ferry troops to the front","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"alt":"PICKET EXPRESS: Miners from Bold Colliery used double-decker buses to ferry troops to the front","class":"media-element file-inlineleft","data-delta":"1"}}]]The pit’s union branch acquired two old double-decker buses from the local corporation to ferry pickets around the north west and beyond.

By devious means, they also acquired a second-hand police riot van for the same purpose. The word “Police” had been removed from the vehicle before it was sold but the single-deck bus was still painted in blue police colours.

Months into the strike and amidst the horrors of the police violence against striking miners and their communities there were lighter moments leading to stories which travelled through the coalfields. Yorkshire and the north-west were no exception.

Perhaps best-known is the Yorkshire story of the snowman built by pickets in winter,1984-5. The snowman was topped off with a police helmet — the kind you see on the front at Blackpool. A police inspector drove his Landover at the snowman to demolish it only to find that the pickets had built it around a concrete bollard.

The snowman’s location varies according to the storyteller, but Wheldale Colliery in Yorkshire seems to be the favourite. Or possibly Silverwood, another Yorkshire pit. A song commits the story to posterity. In the north-west, the story that went around picket lines involved the Bold pickets and their ex-police bus.

A motorbike police officer stopped Bold’s ex-police bus because it was overcrowded with pickets, according to Stewart Brown. The officer boarded the bus but when he returned to his motorbike his ignition keys had mysteriously disappeared.

Miners at Bold weren’t passive strikers. Telling the stories of Bold’s picket buses he said: “St Helen’s Council lent us two old double-decker buses. One was really past its sell-by date.

“We used them for picketing in Lancashire. We went to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. I would make maybe 55 or 65 pick-ups around the coalfield. We had maybe 140 or 150 pickets. Whenever we were called on we would picket. We would go.”

Brown says that technically the police bus was bought for use by the local Darby and Joan Club — a social club for older people. The plan was that the miners would give the old folk the bus after the strike.

“The police even taxed it and filled it full of diesel because they thought it was going to an old folks’ club,” said Brown. It was a blue police bus. The only thing it didn’t have was ‘police’ written on it. But I got a sign from a toy shop that said ‘action force’ and we had it on the windscreen.”

Brown was the allocated driver. The incident with the police motorbike officer came soon after.

“The bus was a single-decker. It got packed so much that at one time there were about 120 men on. A motorcycle traffic cop pulled me over. He asked how many men were on. I told him to get on and count.

“He gave me a ticket for overloading the bus. While he was telling me off a mate pinched his keys from his motorbike. He dropped them down a grid. It became a standing joke that we’d nicked his keys.”

Another incident resulted in Brown and another striker being arrested and charged with kidnapping.

“We were taking two buses to a picket line. I didn’t know everybody on my bus, and we were picking pickets up on the way, so new people were always coming on the picket lines who had no association with us.

“We realised two of them were scabs from Parkside because when we drove past the colliery they said to stop the bus because they were working there. We strip-searched them and found their locker keys which they needed for work. We dropped them off half-naked. The lads threw them into a field.”

The incident was reported to police.

“After picketing I went home every Friday at 4.30,” said Brown. “I saw a car pull up and three gorillas got out of it. They came to the door. My wife let them in. He asked if I had driven a bus that morning. I said yes. He said ‘Get dressed you’re under arrest.’”

“They took me to Newton-le-Willows. I was in one cell and my mate was in another. He was a good mate. They took me into an interview room. He said I was in deep trouble. I got on to the branch secretary. The union sent a brief from Liverpool.

“Next thing my barrister comes in. I asked what was the worst they could do to me? He said ‘Seven years to life.’ We got booked out, and charged with kidnap and assault. Then they changed the charges to false imprisonment and assault. That was in November or December.”

The case was heard in Liverpool Crown Court after the strike had ended.

Brown said: “The pit manager and deputy were in court. They said they were there to give me my notice if I went down. The prosecution had me nailed to a cross. The prosecutor said: ‘These men must have been terrified.’ I said it was more like a rugby outing. The judge said there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. We were both free to go.”

When the strike ended in March 1985, Bold was among the first raft of pit closures which followed.

“I was prepared for the strike but I wasn’t prepared for the whirlwind that followed,” said Brown. Brown believes Bold was selected for closure because of its militancy, an act of spite by the National Coal Board.

“I was one of the last ones to leave Bold,” he said. “I ended up capping the shafts. I think they did that to rub the salt in.” A long-standing resentment felt by Brown was the attacks by politicians and the media on strikers as thugs and bully-boys.

“I’m a big lad. I was an ex-amateur rugby league player at a pretty high level,” he said. “I was not a thug or a bully, never a troublesome lad. Just a working-class lad with working-class values.”

After Bold closed Brown worked at other pits in the north west  — Goldbourne, Bickershaw and Parsonage Colliery. All were shut down. After that, he went to work in South Africa.

Brown became a miner in 1972 when he was 19, first on haulage then on the coal face.

“It goes back in my family to 1620, and I was the last one,” he said. “They were all miners on my mother’s side and my father’s. Both my parents were communists. I’m a socialist and proud of it.”

[[{"fid":"66357","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Stewart Brown outside the Lancashire Mining Museum. Photo: Neil Terry Photography","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"2":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Stewart Brown outside the Lancashire Mining Museum. Photo: Neil Terry Photography","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"alt":"Stewart Brown outside the Lancashire Mining Museum. Photo: Neil Terry Photography","class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"2"}}]]Back from South Africa living in the north-west again now, and aged 71, Brown is involved in the Lancashire Coal Mining Museum at Astley where he gives talks on the mining industry and the strike. He’s also still politically active.

“Now I go on rail workers’ picket lines, doctors’ picket lines — because I know what it’s like to be on strike,” he said.

Sid Vincent shamed the NUM

The behaviour of the leadership of the NUM in the north-west still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth of those miners who stayed loyal to their union.

The NUM’s North West area full-time general secretary was Sid Vincent who was on record as opposing the strike even before it started.

Of the half dozen pits remaining in the north-west coalfield when the strike began, only Bold and Sutton Manor were loyal to the union. At the rest, only a small minority of principled mineworkers came out.

Paul Kelly, a striking miner at Agecroft Colliery in Greater Manchester, was one of them. He told the Morning Star: “Sid Vincent was undermining the strike from the start. Later he was conniving with the UDM (the scab breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers).

“He met the UDM. There was a newspaper photographer there to record them coming out of the meeting. Guess where he was from? The Sun.”

During the strike Vincent was an embarrassment to the union, said Brown. Not only did he take no part in the strike, as miners fought for their jobs, families and communities Vincent still enjoyed his union pay packet and infamously went on holiday with his partner to Majorca where a tabloid newspaper photographed him sunbathing. The photo was used in the media to attack the national leadership of the NUM.

Brown said Vincent’s behaviour had consequences. “We took over the union offices in Bolton,” said Brown. “We held them for seven days or so. Sid Vincent had to come home early from Majorca.

“A cupboard in the offices was full of liquor. He came in and said ‘You’ve made your point lads. Let’s have you out.’ He said he’d take us for a pub lunch.

“We knew we wouldn’t get back in, so went for the pub lunch a few at a time, always leaving some lads in the office.

“We eventually all left. We’d made our point and we’d dragged Sid Vincent back from holiday.

“As for Sid, let me make it abundantly clear: he was an embarrassment.”