Born Under Punches (21 page)

Mick rubbed his face with his hands while Dougie digested the news.

‘Aw, shite …' said Dougie.

‘Listen,' said Mick, his voice hesitant.

Dougie looked at him.

‘I need to go home.' His voice was small, distant. ‘Angie … She needs us there. She's not…'

Dougie sighed. Mick saw strain and worry etched into the lines on his face.

‘It's all right, I'll stay.'

‘No,' said Dougie. ‘If she needs you, she needs you. You'd best be off. We'll manage here.'

‘Are you sure?'

Dougie nodded.

‘Thanks.'

Mick stood up, made his way to the door.

‘Tell her I'm askin' after her.'

Mick nodded and left. Dougie sat alone, thinking.

‘Fuck me, it's like Eastern Europe,' said Larkin, looking at the gates to the colliery.

‘You ever been to Eastern Europe, then?' asked Bolland.

Larkin reddened slightly. ‘No, but it's what I'd imagine it to be like. Why, have you?'

‘Just the once. East Berlin. Very bleak. But a kind of strange … chromatic beauty about it.'

‘Spoken like a true poncy photographer.'

Bolland smiled. ‘Piss off.'

They had had to park in a designated area, directed there by the police. Even then they had been scrutinized for signs of miner sympathy, not allowed through another cordon of police until they could convince them who they were and what they were doing there.

They looked around, breathing in the tension like an airborne virus.

The strikers stood against the gates and the chain-link fence, sticks, dustbin lids and other makeshift noisemakers in hand. The police stood opposite them in lines with shields, batons and anonymous visors in place. They looked to Larkin like something out of a sci-fi film, a faceless, merciless invasion force.

‘Imperial storm troopers,' said Bolland, echoing his thoughts.

The TV crews were there; hungry-eyed, beige-jacketed reporters there to capture the news, hoping to make some.

‘Let's find Dougie,' said Larkin.

They found him outside the Miners' Welfare Hall, talking to some pickets who had made it through the roadblocks.

‘Hello, lads,' he said. ‘It's gonna be bad today. I think the best you can do is get some shots that'll tell the truth. That's all, just tell the truth.'

Larkin nodded. ‘We will.'

There was no more time for talk. A rumour began to move through the crowd, a Mexican wave of apprehension and adrenalin.

A voice cried out: ‘The bus is comin'. This is it.'

‘Right, lads,' shouted Dougie through a loud-hailer to the assembled miners. ‘Get ready.'

The men surged towards the gates.

‘But remember the TV crews are here. Watch what you're doin'. Don't play into their hands …'

Dougie's words were lost in the air as men moved all around him.

The mood was different, thought Larkin. More angry than the previous day, more ready for a fight.

Dougie could feel the rasping shake of his breath, the thump of his own heart. Within that heartbeat he felt the beat of all the men there.

Coldwell waited.

But not for long. The bus, the same one as the previous day, made its way towards the colliery, revving and crunching as it negotiated the new road system, the route created specially for it.

It turned the corner, progress slow but inexorable. At either side walked lines of armoured police.

The strikers were waiting.

‘Come on, lads!' Dougie shouted.

He was a general giving an unnecessary order.

The men swarmed forward, chanting, shouting, sticks and bin lids held aloft, clanged together. They surrounded the bus, were pushed back by police shields. They were yelling, lungs venting, football terrace training used against different opposition.

The bus jerked, halted, grey clouds bursting from its rear, enveloping police and miners alike. Despite the police escort, the driver was more scared than on the previous day.

The miners kept pushing.

Scab! Scab! Scab!

Bastards!

Ya scab bastards!

Words overlapping, fired out sharp. Sticks and lids clattering against the shields. Rhythm in free fall, a ferocious beat.

Inside the bus the scabs sat, again scarved and huddled, even more fearful than on the previous day.

The strikers were still chanting, rage feeding their energy, taking their arms beyond tiredness, their voices beyond hoarseness.

The miners pushed, the police pushed back. The bus stopped moving.

Dean Plessey found an opening in the police ranks. He jumped at the bus, trying to prise open the door with his fingers. Words hurled with spittle-flecked fury, eyes alight with mob-fuelled hatred, narrowing the gap between legitimate anger and the legitimization of violence.

He was pulled off and hurled back into the crowd.

The bus started moving again, moved, centimetre by centimetre.

The strikers didn't move.

The driver put his foot down, revved again. The bus moved and kept moving.

The colliery gates were pulled open, a solid wall of police admitting the bus, keeping out the miners, shields pushing back bodies.

The miners, outnumbered, had no choice but to give way. The bus moved inside, the gates closed. The police regrouped in front of the colliery.

The pickets fell back, spent. The chanting died down, replaced by a bitter silence.

‘Dougie Howden. You've just watched—'

A microphone thrust in his face.

‘Get out me way, woman.'

Dougie knocked the microphone to one side, kept walking.

‘Bloody reporters …'

The men stood there looking at each other. Dougie looked at the police. Even behind the visors he could see them smirking.

‘Bastards …'

Chants started up again as miners ringed the fence.

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.

Out, out, out.

Scab, scab, scab.

Dougie joined them, adding his voice.

‘If you don't stop throwing stones, my men will move in.'

The voice, amplified by the buzz of a loud-hailer, rained over the top of the strikers. Gradually the chants stopped, their voices trailing off.

The strikers looked at each other, confused. None of them had been throwing stones.

The voice again.

‘This is your second warning. If you do not stop throwing stones, my men will move in.'

Confusion became bemusement. The strikers began to laugh.

Again: ‘Since you have not complied with the orders given, I am left with no alternative.'

Before the words had echoed and died, the riot police in front of the gates ran towards the men. Shields up, batons drawn. It was like an advancing, offensive wall moving towards them.

The men stood for a few seconds, rooted in shock and dis-belief, then turned and ran.

From the other end of the street the sound of hooves began to tear up the air. Mounted police, charging.

The strikers looked around, stunned. They dispersed: running right and left, pell-mell, into each other, anywhere to get away. The riot police kept moving towards them.

They looked around, trying to find anything that could be used as a weapon.

Stones started to fly. Batons engaged.

The battle of Coldwell had begun.

They ran. Through streets, past shops, through gardens, round houses. No plan, no tactics, just to get away.

The police had planned. They had tactics. Men deployed to get the miners running, men deployed to be there when they stopped. And the rerouted, reordered Coldwell would ensure they stopped exactly where they wanted them.

Some uniforms felt nothing: this was just part of their job, another way to earn overtime. To others with family and friends in the pits it was difficult, a conflict of loyalties. But to most of them it was the Falklands War they never had. They weren't the army, they were the next best thing: police behaving as army. But this time it wasn't the Argies; it was the miners who were the enemy.

The enemy within.

They lay in wait: tooled up, ready.

Here they come.

Hidden and braced, coiled and bated.

Here they—

Waiting for the enemy to come to them.

Here—

The sound of running feet, the huff of men unused to exercise, forced into action. Scared. Confused. Voices shouting, overlapping.

Waiting for the signal—

And then they were on them: shouting whooping, batons raised, armoured bodies rushing forward, a blue serge tsunami.

Batons slowly up, straining back, quickly down. Connect. And again. Connect. And again.

Unguarded bodies twisting, crumpling and falling. Fighting back: some fists thrown, some lucky punches landed, some desperate kicks connected.

On the police: opportunistic injuries, lessened by the armour.

On the miners: plenty of injuries. No armour.

Batons slowly up, straining back, quickly down. Connect. And again. Connect. And again.

Connecting with flesh, punching through and breaking bone. Kickback from the impact: reverberations felt all the way through to collarbones.

Pain raining down, soaking through skin, reaching bones, organs.

Bodies, not heads. Bodies, not heads. The chief constable's words. The official policy. Hard to implement every time. Sometimes the necessity of winning every battle overrode that command. Sometimes like had to be answered with like. And sometimes you just needed to see, feel and hear the skull crack like an egg hatching blood.

One by one, the enemy went down. A pile, of bloodied plaid and denim. A broken mass.

Some ran off, escaped. They would be caught, dealt with, by other patrols hidden elsewhere. Taken down by another wall of batons.

The defeated bodies of the enemy were hauled away, sealed in armoured police vans, transported to police cells. The batons and boots of the frontline soldiers had done their work.

Now they tended their wounded, regrouped and re-prepared. They were laughing, self-mythologizing their baton work, perfecting later legends. Laughing up the body count. They were high on testosterone and blood: even those with initial misgivings, now they had had a taste, they too had a hard-on for hatred.

They reassumed positions, waited for the signal.

Waited to attack again.

Dougie couldn't move. He just watched, rooted by horror.

He was a veteran of picket lines and no stranger to confrontation, but he had never seen anything like this before. He had thought he never would. Not in his own country. His own town. His own street.

He thought again of his national service. Germany in the 1950s. There as friends, not foes. The German people happy to see them. He remembered bar-room conversations he had had with German ex-soldiers. Their English better than his German. One man, Florian, attempting to explain the temporary insanity that had gripped the country two decades previously. The rise of Hitler. Nazis and Germans, he explained, were two different things. The National Socialists were elected on the promise to reunite a divided country. They ruled by propaganda and brutality, rewarding a few, persecuting those who didn't share their vision. People, he said, would watch Nazi soldiers abuse and beat other people in the street. And no one would stop them. Not because they didn't think it was a terrible thing that was happening, but because if they did they knew they would be next.

Above all, Florian told him, it was something that could happen anywhere. At any time.

Dougie hadn't believed him at the time, had thought he had just been apologizing, self-justifying.

But he did now.

All the police were lacking, he thought, was a swastika on their arms.

His mind couldn't find a rational vocabulary to process what his eyes were seeing.

A miner on his knees, a mounted policeman encircling him, two foot officers beside him, taking turns with their batons, the horse keeping him in place, dissuading him from running.

Dougie knew the man, had worked with him for several years. He was a big man, wife and three children, came in the club on a Friday night and drank with his friends. He was no coward, but no angel, and could settle an argument with his fists as he had done on several occasions. But not a bully. Not a man who went looking for trouble. A man unafraid to stand up for himself.

That man was now crying, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side, his body twisting ineffectually in a futile attempt to dodge the blows.

The policemen were taking it in turns, their arms showing little sign of tiring.

The man's sobbing increased. Dougie saw a dark stain spread over the front of his jeans, the ground dampen beneath him. The man had pissed himself.

Dougie heard the two policemen laugh and continue the beating, their enthusiasm intensified.

The man gave a final howl of rage, fear, humiliation. Then silence. He slumped on to the ground, broken.

The policemen carried him away.

That wasn't an isolated incident. All around him, Dougie could see the same scene being repeated. With variations, but the same result.

Florian's words again.

It was something that could happen anywhere. Any time.

His body began to move. Slowly at first, as if in a dream, then with increasing speed once the danger of his situation became apparent.

I've got to keep moving, he thought. I can't stop. Because if I do, I'll be next.

Larkin, like everyone around him, ran.

Pelting through the streets with the rest of the pickets, up blind alleys, around corners, past shops, it was like the Pamplona bull stampede: for black-coated bulls read body-armoured coppers, for goring horns read batons.

They rounded a corner and found another police unit waiting for them. They charged, batons waving, screaming.

Chaos reigned. The miners ran down alleyways, through doorways, into each other.

Batons rained, stopping escapes, breaking limbs.

Larkin ran. Oblivious of who was with him, not risking the time to look. Just powering on.