大象传媒

"I weren't right happy. I mean, they threw bottles and stuff and bricks at us."

There was a lot of mistrust of the police among striking miners and their families in 1984, but what was it like for the police, bused across the country to protect the working miners who crossed picket lines?

When Mark was 11, he remembers a 大象传媒 crew coming to his Nottinghamshire pit village to report on the miners' strike that had taken over his life. With a striking miner for a dad, Mark felt like he was part of it. But the police were there too, and he鈥檚 never forgotten what happened when he got too close to the action.

Mark travels to West Yorkshire to meet a retired PC who spent the whole year policing the strike and was at the Orgreave coking plant near Sheffield, where the most violent clashes took place. He hears tales of shared pork pies, trousers-down sunbathing, and potatoes with six-inch nails in.

Archive: 大象传媒.

Presenter: Mark Watson
Series Producer: Simon Maybin
Editor: Clare Fordham
Sound mix: James Beard
Production Co-ordinator: Ellie Dover
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke