The miners' strike of 1984-5 involved the police in a way no other industrial dispute has ever done, with battles betwen police and pickets becoming a staple of the television news. Nick Morrison speaks to some of those who manned the thin blue line.

IT was the last great battle of the Crimean War. On November 5, 1854, outnumbered six to one, the 243-strong 68th (Durham) Light Infantry put three Russian infantry battalions to flight at the village of Inkerman, in the Ukraine.

Among the pubs and streets which took their name from that famous victory was an open cast site near Tow Law in County Durham, which was to be the scene of another struggle against overwhelming odds when, 130 years on from that Crimean triumph, 24 police officers charged against 600 striking miners. This was the second Battle of Inkerman.

It was early June 1984, three months into the miners' strike, when Acting Inspector John Walker, on duty in Bishop Auckland, took a call from his control room. It was about 11pm and some 600 miners were leaving Easington to go to Inkerman. John was to gather what officers he could and go to meet them.

Inkerman was being used to store coal during the dispute, and had already come to the attention of the miners' pickets, anxious to stop supplies moving around the country. At that time of night it was closed, nothing was going in or out, and there was no obvious reason why the pickets should be heading there, but John phoned around, managed to summon five dog section officers and another 18 officers, and set off. Between them, the officers' sum total of equipment was a van fitted with protective wire mesh, and one riot helmet.

When John arrived at Inkerman, it was to find three of the officers had parked their vehicles outside the gate. John drove in, but before he could get the vehicles shifted, the miners arrived. Inside the compound were now 24 police officers. Outside, separated from them by a five-barred gate, a low wall and an earth mound, were 600 miners.

It was around midnight when something started to happen. A group of pickets started rocking the police vans standing outside the gate, soon turning them over. But inside one of the vans was an Alsatian puppy, about to start police dog training. The police got in their riot van and drove towards the gate.

ALMOST straight away they were subjected to a hail of stones, plucked from a handy dry stone wall. The officers withdrew, before trying again, this time with most of them outside the van, using it as cover.

"The stones started coming over again and it was getting really, really nasty," recalls John. "We got to about 50 yards from the gate and it was really buzzing now, all these rocks and stones are being thrown at us. The entrance to the site was just littered with stones.

"I was thinking, 'What do we do now?'. One of my officers had radioed headquarters but the cavalry wasn't going to get here in time. I was at a total loss.

"One officer whispered in my ear, 'Sarge, we have got to do something', and that just clued me in. I went round the men and said, 'Will you charge? I don't want to run away'. We were all worried. I was absolutely of the belief that somebody could get seriously hurt if they attacked us. I have never felt like that in the whole of my police service. I said to them, 'Will you do it?', and out of sheer desperation they all said yes."

The police dogs were to charge to the left, the other officers to the right. Some of the officers were even equipped with 12 inch wooden truncheons, which they drew. But before John could put his plan into action, he was overtaken by events.

"Suddenly this wave of pickets came over the wall, still throwing all these stones. I remember one of the pickets wearing a checked lumberjack jacket, and I saw this jacket and all these miners come running at us.

"We could run away and live to regret it, or we could do something, so I just shouted, 'Charge the buggers', and we ran shouting into a hail of stones, the dogs to the left and the rest of us peeling off to the right.

"Suddenly we were among them and they were turning and they were running away. There was such relief coursing through me when I saw them turn. I remember stopping at a bus and saying to the driver, 'If you don't leave now you are getting locked up'. I shouted to get their registration numbers, and I heard miners say, 'Christ, they're getting our car numbers'. They were just getting in their cars and buses and leaving. The feeling of relief was absolutely fantastic."

But the charge was not without cost. Two of the officers had been felled straight away: one hit in the head, the other in the hand. A third was hospitalised after suffering a leg injury, and had to be medically retired.

JOHN had told his officers not to make any arrests, but four miners were arrested and charged, although none were convicted. Minutes after the pickets left Inkerman, police reinforcements arrived from Durham.

"It was the first and only occasion I have ever told officers to draw their truncheons and charge a group of people, and if we had a dozen truncheons among the 24 of us we were doing well," John says. "It was out of sheer desperation: I felt if we left I wouldn't be able to hold my head up, and neither would the other officers. None of those officers said we should withdraw, but when we were among the miners, not one turned on me, and not one turned on any other police officer.

"I was terrified. I didn't think people could act like this. I was still a little nave to the violence that some miners were capable of."

But John says he has never been bitter about the way the miners behaved that night. He knows the vast majority of miners were responsible people, and there was only ever a small number of troublemakers. He also knows that the stakes, and the passions, were so high, that normally reasonable people on both sides were driven to extreme acts.

"They were fighting for their jobs and they were fighting for their communities, but coal was not going to be there for ever," he says. "I don't hold any grudges against anyone on the picket line. I just wish that people could put it behind them."

Unlike the first Battle of Inkerman, this time there were no commendations, no official recognition of the bravery of those who took part. Nor did it receive any attention outside of the North-East. While the bloody confrontations of the strike were a nightly fixture of the television news, the second Battle of Inkerman was just another skirmish in the war between Government and miners.