The pit protest that scaled new heights

DUrING the miners’ strike in 1984, living opposite us in our village was a young miner, who I’ll call Paul. he was an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘Keep Pits Open’ stance led by Arthur Scargill. Late one July evening, Paul and a mate climbed the 300ft chimney at the local quarry and successfully wrote ‘Justice to the miners’ down its full height. It was a monumental achievement for two lads more accustomed to working hundreds of feet below ground as opposed to hundreds of feet above it. Paul proudly told me: ‘I seem to remember getting the paint from your shop, so we considered adding a note at the bottom as an advert for your business in the hope you would sponsor us.’ Pictures of their monumental sign-writing achievement appeared in most of the national newspapers. Paul and his mate didn’t escape the law for long, because a few days later two men knocked on the door of his mother’s house. Paul was upstairs having a bath when two detectives called and asked his mother if they could have a word with him. She welcomed the two men into her home, sat them at the table then went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up to Paul — who at the time was also an active member of the CNd (Campaign for Nuclear disarmament). ‘Some CNd men have come to talk to you, Paul,’ she said. She then gave the two men a cup of tea and a biscuit each while they waited. Paul hurriedly finished off his bath, quickly got dressed, came downstairs to meet them . . . and was promptly arrested. his mother was as surprised as he was and told Paul: ‘Well, they seemed such nice young men.’ Paul’s frustrated reaction was: ‘mother, don’t you know the difference between the CNd and the bloody CId?’ For their extravagant excursion into the world of graffiti on such a massive scale, Paul and his accomplice were taken to court and each given a year’s probation.

Des thorpe, Worksop, notts.