Our brief was a simple one and had been explained to us, on the bus journey, by Ifor, the area strike coordinator. He had had it on good authority that a convoy of lorries delivering coal to the Port Talbot Steelworks was expected to arrive at around seven o clock. It was our task, along with the hundreds of other pickets, to stop the convoy fulfilling its objective by fair means or foul. I suspected that the latter would have a huge bearing on what would transpire that day.

 We duly arrived at 6-30 a.m. on a beautiful July morning and mingled with the multitude of pickets already gathered there.

 It became immediately apparent by their accents that they, the pickets, were from the Rhondda and the East Wales coalfields. Fellow miners and fellow Welshmen we may have been but that was where the similarity ended. The vitriol and hatred they directed towards Thatcher and MacGregor in particular and the police in general was profound although not an officer of the law was in sight. They were far more volatile, animated and fiercely determined than we, the West Wales lads. Where militancy was concerned they left us standing. Perhaps it was in their blood, in their protracted history of hardship, privation and endless struggles against the greedy and unscrupulous coal masters of a bygone age. Who knows? In a perverse sort of way I envied them.

 There appeared to be a leader among their pickets for every time he spoke, the men in his immediate vicinity listened intently to his instructions. I didn't catch his name but he was of middle age, thin faced with an aquiline nose, horn rimmed glasses and receding hairline. Passing him by on the High Street you would have been forgiven for categorising him as an accountant or librarian. His voice, however, carried the conviction and authority of a born leader and it was obvious that he was, by now, battle hardened in our present struggle.

 "We must make sure that we stop the very first lorry," he warned, his fore-finger jabbing the still morning air to accentuate his point. "If we fail we might as well go home for breakfast and come back another day. If we succeed the whole bloody convoy will have to stop, then we get em."

 What he meant by `get em' he left open ended and it was at this point that I realised I was about to become embroiled in an act which could have very serious consequences indeed. Murder perhaps, or at very least, manslaughter. On the one hand I pitied the lorry drivers should the men get their hands on them, on the other I knew that the drivers were, by their very actions, helping to break the strike and, thereby, indirectly helping to bring about the demise of our industry. I was between a rock and a hard place.

Whilst `Horn Rimmed' had been speaking, our ranks had been swelled by fifty, or so, members of the opposite sex. Miners' wives, or so I thought.

 "I knew they'd make it," enthused a picket standing next to me. "Who are these women then?" I inquired.

"Who are these women, " he repeated, staring at me accusingly. "For Christ's sake man, on which f****** planet have you been living on recently. They're the heroines of Greenham Common."

 Of course they were! How stupid could I get? There had been something vaguely familiar about them yet it had failed to register. Dishevelled and exhausted they may have appeared but I knew that this was but a mere veneer of the privations they had suffered during the past few months. They were from all walks of life but were bonded together in a common and worthy cause and now they had travelled over two hundred miles to help us in our worthy cause. I felt a humble sense of gratitude.

 A full ten minutes elapsed which proved to be somewhat of a hiatus in the proceedings. I took in the scene in a kind of reverie. Within an arm's length of where I stood a pair of Red Admiral butterflies were busily engaged in a mad fandango of courtship, indifferent and impervious to our tribulations. On a telephone wire, opposite the main thoroughfare, a flock of blackbirds had perched, looking for all the world, like a gaggle of nosey housewives huddled together to witness the drama which was about to enfold. Outside one of the houses beyond, a teenager was vainly trying to kick-start life into an antiquated motorcycle whilst his nondescript mongrel barked its displeasure from the front lawn.

 Suddenly, a loud cry of "Here they come,” emanated forth from the more eagle-eyed of the pickets. I turned my head towards the motorway and sure enough the convoy was approaching out of the early morning mist.

 Something, call it intuition, made me look in the opposite direction and from the gates of the steelworks, marching smartly, came a seemingly endless column of police officers dressed in full riot gear. They formed a line directly in front of us, their eyes cold and expressionless beneath their visors. Aliens from a distant galaxy.

 They had, certainly, caught us on the hop, but in retrospect we were naive not to have even guessed that a convoy of such magnitude would not go unprotected by members of Her Majesty's obedient servants.

It took what seemed like an eon, although in reality it could not have been more than a few minutes before the first lorry came abreast of the main body of pickets. Because they were in convoy their speed was little more than a crawl. Without warning a salvo of half bricks, rocks and small stones came whistling over my head. These pickets were forearmed ready for the battle. Now I knew how they intended stopping the convoy.

 The missiles struck the side window of the first cab and it immediately `frosted over.' A second salvo saw the window shatter completely. Even at a distance I could clearly see the profile of the drivers face. Blood was streaming from a wound to his temple but he sat bolt upright in his seat as if mesmerised or, in all likelihood, petrified and apparently oblivious to all that was happening around him. He was going to get his wagon into the steelworks come hell or high water.

 At a given signal the police suddenly broke ranks and charged through the front of the picket line intent at getting to the main protagonists strategically placed at the rear. They, themselves, high tailed it, straddling nearby garden fences and hedges and vaulting the walls at the back of the houses to disappear from view within a matter of less than a minute. The officers gave up the chase almost immediately as riot gear was not the most suitable kit to perform feats of athleticism.

 As for myself, I was sent sprawling by a sideways swipe of a police shield, but apart from being a little shaken I was, in the main, uninjured. The picket who had been standing next to me had suffered the same fate but had not been so lucky. He was comatose on the pavement, a crimson tide flowing down his left arm.

 Meanwhile, the police turned their attentions to the pickets who were guilty of no more than hurling abuse at the lorry drivers. They grabbed the nearest they could lay their hands on by the scruff of the neck and frog marched them down the road to the gates of the steelworks. Sex discrimination played no part in who they arrested as the captured included at least three of the lasses from Greenham Common. The Area Police Commissioner had, in all probability, issued a directive to the troops on the ground, as it were, that at least an acceptable amount of pickets had to be arrested in order to justify the high wages they were earning. They fully intended that he wouldn't be disappointed by their morning's work.

 The scene, by now, was one of utter pandemonium and confusion as the remainder of the pickets, myself included, scattered to the four winds lest some of us should, also, become the unfortunate ones to spend an uncomfortable night in a police cell.

 And all the while the convoy continued to pour into the steelworks with its load of precious mineral bound for the ever-gluttonous bellies of the blast furnaces.

Ten, harrowing, minutes later it was all over and it was then that I saw a fleet of police panda cars and vans leave by a side entrance to the steelworks each vehicle loaded with its cargo of `the unfortunates'.

 I had evaded capture that day more by good luck than by good judgement.

 The mood amongst the lads on the homeward bus journey was one of anger and despondency. Twenty two of us had made the outward trip and twenty were going home. Billy 'Butty' Evans and Frank Matthews would be held as guests in Her Majesty's police cells. I reflected on the incident of the injury to my fellow picket with a great degree of shame. I should have done the right thing, the brave thing and that was to attend to his injuries regardless of the outcome but it was too late now.

 I knew from that day onward that the strike would not end in a victorious All over by Christmas, so confidently predicted by our leaders and in a way, so reminiscent of The Great War.

Hafan