In the mid 80s, if you didn’t know, there was a bit of a kafuffle between the UK’s coal miners and the government. To be honest I can’t even remember what it was all about, other than it was basically a fall out between Margret Thatcher the Prime Minister and Arthur Scargill the miners union leader. I know you can find more online about it all as I have spent time reading accounts a few years ago. However the facts aren’t important to my tale.
Enough to say it was a very sad time in the area I grew up in and it affected many of my mates who worked “down t’ pit” and if you think people are poor now believe me there were lots of miners families going without the basics as the strike dragged on. Many had no heating in the depths of winter and to make things worse the Nottinghamshire miners started going back to work leaving the Yorkshire chaps isolated and desperate. It was basically a siege war between the government and a group of hard working blokes many of whom have had their lives shortened thanks to the poor conditions at work over 2000 feet below ground, often working in tiny seams in the old days just big enough to squeeze a man through. As we all know now though the use of coal and fossil fuels has no real long term future and coal fired aircraft never having taken off so to speak, designers preferring to use runny dinosaur juice to power them, anyhow I digress.
There were running battles against the police and the miners with lots of the police being bussed up t’north from down south, some of whom taunted the miners with how much overtime and extra pay they were getting which didn’t help relations much. I have friends who lived though the strike still have little or no time for the police. Which now I come to it with all the taking the knee and other shenanigans that’s going on these days who does have time for them? There were for many years after the strike derelict houses in pit villages with the word SCAB daubed on them which was the name given to those who returned to work, the owners being shunned by the ones who toughed it out to the very end. Even today over 30 years later feelings are still raw between some of the ex work mates.
In the end a year later the miners returned to work but it was short lived; the mines were closed and all the deep mines around where I grew up are gone along with much of the community spirit, such as heavy drinking and fighting with no hard feelings being replaced with drugs and and stabbings rather than a gentlemanly punch up the bracket.
During the strike the filth, sorry, the police used to stop and search cars crossing the border from Yorkshire to Nottinghamshire looking for potential miners going to do battle with the ones crossing the picket lines. There would be police cars parked up at the side of the road and if you looked dodgy they would pull you over and start asking questions about where you were going and if they didn’t like the answers they would turn you back. I guess this would be called stop and search these days and I’m sure there would be an uproar about it, but the snowflakes hadn’t been born yet.
At the time I used to practice my motorbike racing skills on my way home from work. Taking a long route home I had a loop I would ride at excessive speed (this isn’t a confession) with my ‘snap’ bag blowing in the wind behind me as I bent the needle on the speedo. I recall hitting my knee on the road doing this and as I only had a pair of jeans on leaving some skin behind on the road. I look back at this now and although it makes me smile I know I was lucky that I still have two legs and am still here to tell the tale.
I had noticed the police cars parked in a couple of spots where I started my test track and also one about half way around but both at slower parts of the track so I never gave it much thought, well not until after a week or so of ‘racing’ one of the bobbies stood in the road and waved me over. You see there were no mobile phones and social media so once the newspapers had been read and the crossword completed I guess they needed something to fill the long hours and pulling people over was good for the statistics, and it wasn’t raining.
I was on my second lap so I pulled into the pits where I was instructed to remove my helmet, I asked him shouldn’t he be wearing his hat, this fell on deaf ears. “We have been watching you and you seem to be getting faster”.
“I’m just being more efficient”.
“Well we know where you are going and how far it is and we got the other car to tell us when you went past and we clocked the distance yesterday so we know you are speeding”. Time, speed and distance. As all pilots will know that if you know any two of those you can work the other out, however I wasn’t aware the police knew about his formula, but apparently they do. Or at least they did, which is impressive the modern cop would need an app for that. At that time it wasn’t a concept I was familiar with, so as they say, every day is a school day. So I guess we were all a bit wiser, me because I learnt how to work out how fast things were going and the police man because he now knew my name and address all of which he wrote down on a piece of paper that said I had to take my insurance and licence into the local nick.
I don’t know if they could have prosecuted me for speeding, he reckoned I had averaged over 70mph, on a road that had a 60 limit and even that would be unsafe. Truth is I know I had been well over 100mph in places, (this is still not a confession) so it was indeed a relief when he told me not to be an idiot and be more careful. My licence was in tatters from 2 previous speeding convictions in the last year and another set of points would have meant the end of my 2 wheel capers, also I would be going to work on the bus, so reducing my nights rest by 30 minutes (I also had a fast route to work on the bike!)
In my entire working life I have been late for work twice. Once wasn’t my fault I ended up having a ride in an ambulance with a family member who was ill so I cancelled the days work. The other time was when I crashed my bike but still managed to get back on and ‘clock on’, with my knee and leg soaked in blood before being advised to go to the medical centre to get it bandaged.
The crash happened on a sweeping left hand bend with a bus stop on the inside line. Every morning I went past hanging out of the seat at some stupid speed. Each morning at the same time there would be a crowd of people waiting for the bus as I flashed passed. This particular morning the bike went past them on its side with me sliding after it coming to an abrupt stop as my knee hit the kerb. I lay there doing the old ‘check for damage before getting up’ routine, my knee hurt like hell but as I stood up I came face to face with an old chap who had wandered over from the bus stop to check up on me, at least I thought he had.
“Do you know son, I’ve been waiting for that to happen for weeks, serves you right, fucking idiot”. He wandered back to the bus stop and re-joined the queue. He was right I guess.
Once again I digress. A few years later I was working for Nige, an agricultural contractor who was paying me not much to drive a Teleporter, a rather scientific name for a materials handler which is a rather grand name for a fork truck we used for loading big bales of straw onto lorries. We were in his van heading home for the night after a long dusty day moving straw.
He wanted to call by a field of bales we hadn’t managed to get moved yet that were close to the centre of one of the more militant miners villages to make sure the kids hadn’t set fire to them yet (it was only a matter of time). It was a nightmare working around there as the kids used to actually play outside in those days, often using our bales as a playground before setting fire to them to keep warm. It was late though so we were hopeful they would be still be straw coloured and not black and smoking. However as we pulled into the gate hole to the field and we saw lights moving around at the in the dusk at far end of the field.
As we got close it turned out to be a police car parked next to a very small Kubota garden tractor with one of the Old Bill looking it over. After a brief introduction he explained that some kids had stolen it and had been riding it around in the field until it had run out of fuel. Interestingly he was worried about it going missing again if they left it, my cynical self thinks that these days they wouldn’t have gone out looking for it and if they found it wouldn’t be bothered what happened to it next. Although I also doubt kids would TWOC a garden tractor, firstly because they are all inside playing games and secondly because it wouldn’t be fast enough for a spotty teenager who has been used to doing 150mph in a Ferrari in GTA 5 whilst running prostitutes over.
Because Nige was an upstanding citizen he offered to help get the thing back to the police station. Without even carrying out a risk assessment, completing any paperwork or spending half a day watching YouTube videos on how to move a small tractor we tied it to the back of Nige’s van with about 20 foot of rope and the Bobby said they would follow us down the road to the pig pen, sorry, the police station in the village; yes believe it or not most small towns and villages had their own police stations, but, because of a lack of crime I guess they closed them all, then the crime came back, not rocket science is it?
So on a warm Friday night in an old mining village we set off; way too fast! The garden tractor was designed to do 5mph not 30 and the brakes and steering snatched making me weave violently. I was having issues keeping the thing straight as we sped past a local pub next to a roundabout with its beer garden full of pissed up police hating ex miners, followed by a police car with its blue flashing lights on and me swearing like a miner at Nige for driving too fast.
It became apparent that the miners and their families thought we were being chased by the police as they all rose to their feet and cheered us on. I have never felt so well supported by so many, the police were being abused by them and called all sorts as we did a victory lap around the roundabout with my cursing being drowned out by the shouts and cheers of my fans.
We dumped the tractor at the police station and headed back past our new found friends with Nige blowing the horn to another standing ovation as we headed off home.
I drive past that pub on my way to work each day I go flying and sometimes on an evening in the summer the beer garden is full of people getting pissed and I often smile as I remember that night but more so these days I feel like just pulling into the car park ordering a beer and telling crewing I’m going to have a drink with my mates rather than spending the next 14 hours in a metal tube trying to stay awake .
One day perhaps!
