Between the striking miners and those who wanted to work stood a thin blue line of police. ANDY SMART spoke to one Notts officer with vivid memories from 1984

IT was the worst moment of young constable Norman England's nine-month miners' dispute ordeal.

A march in support of striking miners through the centre of Mansfield had exploded into a running battle with the police.

At the end of a thin blue line, holding back hundreds of enraged protesters, PC England suddenly found himself isolated.

"Out of the corner of my eye, suddenly I could no longer see the policeman who should have been next to me.

"I turned my head and that's when a striking miner punched me ... while I wasn't looking."

He came out with little more than a sore head on a day which saw him rack up 22 hours of non-stop duty, not an uncommon occurrence.

"My main memory is the boredom. We regularly did 12 to 13-hour shifts, living in a Transit van, waiting to be sent to a picket line or to stop flying pickets coming into the county.

"I remember one freezing night we were at J25 on the M1 to intercept flying pickets. It was about 1am and the cold was coming up through my boots. I fell asleep standing up," he said.

Twenty-five years on and now an inspector based in West Bridgford, he says he bears no grudges, despite being spat on and continually abused.

"I just used to stand there and smile at them. That was my mechanism for dealing with it.

"I used to build a rapport with the striking miners and you could have a laugh with them. But then as soon as the working miners arrived for their shift, that was all forgotten and we did our job, holding the strikers back.

"I could see the argument from both sides. But the politicians and unions were fighting it out and I was there to make sure no one lost their life or was assaulted.

Insp England believes that was the view of most Notts officers involved in policing the dispute, a view not always shared by those drafted in from other areas.

"They had no allegiance to the county – and the same could be said for miners from outside. But for those of us who had to live and work in the community, there were a lot of grey areas. Some say we were heavy-handed, but we took a hell of a lot of abuse."