East Midlands

Rob Pittam wrote:

It has once again been a month in which events at Ollerton have rarely been out of the news.

The attention of the media has been focused on the alarming growth of incidents of intimidation and violence.

In the village windows have been smashed and there have been numerous threats of violence. Clearly there is a great split developing within the community.

This split was recognised in a letter to all Ollerton NUM members from the Union Branch Committee which said "We are appalled at reported incidents when miner assaults miner and more so when wives and children are threatened by such mindless violence. They must immediately stop it, regardless of their opinions of the dispute".

The letter goes on to say the purpose of the dispute is to "preserve mining communities, not to split and destroy them" and concludes "in these difficult times we have a responsibility to each other to preserve the living and working relationships of the Ollerton mining community".

There sentiments are frequently echoed by people on both sides of the dispute, and mining communities are renowned for their closeness, however it is not difficult to see that there are not one, but two, mining communities within the area at the moment.

The community paper covered the strike

This is well illustrated at the Strike Centre, focal point of the striking community. Here the talk is of supplementary benefits, ordering baby food, maintaining the soup kitchen etc and here, of course, attitudes are hard.

I was told that those still working and demanding a national ballot were merely clutching at straws, and would work regardless of any national referendum decision.

Here the view was that the split within the community was irrevocable and would remain even after the dispute was over.

I spoke to Colin Dixon who told me that over 30 people from Ollerton had been arrested, 26 of them in one day. He himself had been arrested 3 times.

It is memories such as these which will not easily fade. It seems to be generally recognised that incidents such as window smashing are largely being done by pickets from outside the area.

But over 30 people who would otherwise have presumably never been in trouble with the police, have been arrested and photographed.

On the other side miners have had to go to work through a chorus of abuse from their neighbours and workmates. Symbolic of the split is the clear definition of pubs as either for the workers or strikers.

The question is how much of this will remain when the dispute is over? For there will come a time when the police and the flying pickets have gone home and the people of Ollerton and Boughton have to face each other once again.

It is to be hoped for the sake of the community that the common sense called for in the letter mentioned earlier will prevail over the extreme attitudes.