It was the press who kept the public informed about the year long miners' strike. Three Journal staff members recall their time on the picket lines 20 years ago. *********** * David Baines was The Journal's Sunderland reporter in 1984-1985, and is now a sub-editor with the paper.
Police and pickets clash at Monkwearmouth during the miners strike.
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I don't remember his name, but I can't forget his face, or his wife's tears. He was a miner, a family man, a striker, but he had just been released from Durham Jail a broken man. He hadn't done anything horrible or shameful. Like so many others, he had been arrested after a scuffle on the picket line at Monkwearmouth Pit in Sunderland. Magistrates gave him bail, on condition he didn't go within a half mile of the mine, but he was found within that half-mile - visiting friends or relatives - and jailed for breaching bail. He had been locked in with people who had done shameful and very violent things and he was frightened. Frightened of going back, frightened of betraying his friends and family, too frightened to let me tell his story. Others were the same. And it became another story I did not tell. I can't look back on that time with pride. I don't think I did a good job. I told the truth as best I could, but it was only a small part of the truth and after the first few weeks I felt more like a scorer at some bizarre sports match than a journalist covering one of the most important shifts our society had seen in a generation. I had several picket lines on my patch: Monkwearmouth, Dawdon, Murton, Seaham and sometimes Westoe. The pickets were, for the most part, disciplined, despite their desperation. They stayed back and sometimes shouted while six union officers urged those miners going back to work to turn back, to think again. But this was going on at every pithead in the North-East and beyond and reports became too often an amalgamation of numbers. The numbers on the picket, the numbers going through the picket, arrested, in court, jailed for breaching bail conditions. It soon became clear that the Coal Board and the police were winning the numbers game. They gave out numbers - and reports of skirmishes - within minutes. We journalists asked the NUM for their side of the story. The NUM couldn't tell it until they had heard back from their people on the spot. The reports were inevitably one-sided. The striking miners soon came to distrust the journalists and it became even more difficult for us to find out the truth and pass it on. I was able to play a small part in adjusting the balance. The National Union of Journalists' North-East Area Council met the NUM in Durham and our offer to fund a press officer for them was taken up. One of our unemployed members found a job and the strikers were able for the first time to set the news agenda, to get the police and the NCB responding to their reports. But it was too late. I did write some good articles during the strike - covering all sides. But I didn't report enough of the truth - from all sides. Related stories:
At the centre of the storm - March 09 2004 Page 2: Humour, pride and tears: A world vanishes | 
