FORTY years on Hilary Cave offers her recollections of the 1984 miners’ strike from her vantage point as a member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) headquarters staff. Her official responsibilities as head of education vanished as she assumed all manner of organisational tasks including the organisation of mass rallies and demonstrations throughout the country.

The opening chapter recounts a confrontation between the author, accompanied by NUM chief executive Roger Windsor, on the way to a meeting with a police operations chief, and a police roadblock intent on stopping miners from moving around the county.

Characteristically she refused to bow to police intimidation, or let them know she was on her way to meet their boss, challenged them to arrest her and forced them to abandon their pretence and let her pass.

Her account is shot through with an unwavering commitment to the miners’ cause, a strong class consciousness and her communist politics.

She displays a keen and sympathetic view of the great human qualities and frailties of her colleagues including the main figures in the union and in politics and the way this shapes the strike.

Cave combines a clear honesty with sharp insight into the politics of this turning point in class struggle. The book is written with a compelling sense of the period, with dialogue creatively delivered to convey a sense of the tensions and humour, and with remarkable detail.

Generous but sharply perceptive with her judgements she brings into the narrative the experiences and recollections not only of her role but her colleagues, and with a strong appreciation of the remarkable role of the women of the coalfields.

It is a book that will stir the memories of many miners and their families and supporters and recalls a critical period when the sinews of the capitalist state were laid bare to reveal the class realities that stand behind Britain’s bourgeois democracy.

Extract one: Thatcher’s laws

I am travelling with NUM chief executive Roger Windsor to Mansfield to meet a group of councillors and senior police officers so we can negotiate a reasonable route through the town for the NUM miners’ march on Mansfield next month.

To see for ourselves what the police are up to in Nottinghamshire we decide to use minor roads rather than the M1, but as the far north of the county is unknown territory I am never sure exactly where we are when we meet the first roadblock. We join a queue of vehicles containing men, sometimes single, sometimes in groups, who are being spoken to by police and then turned back, one by one. When my turn for questioning arrives the policeman is aggressive.

“Where are you going?”

“We’re going to Mansfield.”

I speak in a determined voice because I’m not going to let him intimidate me.

“Where’ve you come from?”

“Sheffield.”

“Well, you’re going to turn round and go back there. I can see you’re pickets.”

That damned badge of Roger’s! At the start of the strike he ordered a supply of fancy, brightly coloured cardboard badges that announce the wearer as a marshal. The rest of us, thinking they are silly, have nicknamed them sheriff’s badges — but not in Roger’s hearing. Why on Earth is he wearing it today?

“No, we’re not pickets. We have to get to a meeting in Mansfield.”

“No, you don’t,” he orders. "You’re going to turn round and go back to Sheffield.”

“We have to get to Mansfield for a meeting — I’m not turning round.”

He beckons another policeman who walks towards us, truncheon drawn and raised, as though a woman and a man sitting in a car pose some sort of threat to them. They certainly feel threatening to me.

I know a Derbyshire miner whose windscreen was smashed by a policeman just last week as he sat in his car, so feel convinced that’s what will happen to us. Suddenly it’s like watching a hackneyed film, with everything seeming to move in slow motion. Trying not to let my fear show, I tell myself to close my eyes to protect my sight once the windscreen glass starts to shower over us.

There is no chance of escape, as the first police officer is holding onto my car door. Anyway, trying to escape might suggest we’ve done something wrong. Hours seem to pass before the second policeman reaches the front of my car, but despite my fears, he doesn’t use his truncheon to smash the glass in our faces. I am still trying to get used to this unexpected turn of events when the first policeman resumes his threats to me as the driver.

“You’re going to turn round and go back or I’ll arrest you.”

We have to reach this morning’s meeting or we won’t be able to hold the march and rally in Mansfield next month.

“Carry on, arrest me: we’ve done nothing wrong, and we’re going to Mansfield for a meeting.”

Now I have already learned, in the few weeks since the start of the strike, that absence of wrongdoing provides neither physical nor legal defence against the police, so I don’t expect my claim of innocence to carry any weight with this copper.

As anticipated, he begins to intone the words of an arrest, including the required caution. All I can do is wait for him to finish arresting me, then cope with whatever follows. Yet partway through the process his voice falters then stops for no apparent reason. I begin to realise this is how he is forcing the other drivers to turn back: he is threatening to arrest them.

No-one before me seems to have resisted right up until the point of arrest, so my continuing refusal to back down appears to mystify this officer. After an awkward pause he simply abandons the arrest, speaks into his walkie-talkie and tells those at the next roadblock along the road to let my car through.

Our meeting will be tricky as we suspect all the Mansfield district councillors are working miners. They will be unhappy with our proposal to assemble thousands of our striking members to march through their town in what we are calling the “miners’ march on Mansfield.”

We have already found that the police treat us as enemies, yet we need to negotiate permission to march from both councillors and police, as well as agreement on a reasonable route. Because the police roadblock has taken up more time than expected, we are late for the meeting. Walking into the meeting room at Mansfield council offices, Roger announces breezily.

“Sorry we’re late, but Hilary got arrested on the way here.”

Suddenly the room feels electric, with someone asking: “What happened?”

“The police officer told me I had to turn round and go back to Sheffield, but I insisted that we had to come to Mansfield for a meeting.”

As nobody offers any comment on that, we carry on with the meeting, trying to be patient and polite despite our inner feelings. Eventually, we win grudging acceptance of a reasonable route for our march.

As we are about to leave we are approached by the police representative, resplendent in pips and metallic braid, who introduced himself to the meeting as head of operations for Nottinghamshire police. He is clearly unhappy.

“Did you tell my officers you were coming to meet me?”

“No, we shouldn’t have needed to.”

“All we did was tell the truth, that we had to attend a meeting in Mansfield. That should have been enough.”

This goes down very badly.

“I know when my officers are being set up!"

He marches away, clearly feeling his dignity restored now he has uncovered our alleged plot.

That senior police officer was simply one small moving part in the machine of Thatcher’s law, the increasingly intrusive use of every lever of state power to defeat the NUM and weaken the entire trade union movement. Yet prime minister Margaret Thatcher did not dream up these ideas up on her own: instead she followed the script of the play already written in the Ridley report.

Part two of our four-part serialisation will be in next weekend’s paper.

Recollections of the Miners’ Strike by Hilary Cave, a joint Morning Star, Manifesto Press book is available now from our shop at bit.ly/strikeHC.