The final push for the strike to take place was when it was announced that the Yorkshire pit, Cortonwood, was only the first in a wide ranging programme that would result in 20 pit closures and job losses for over 20,000 miners.
And so on 5th March 1984 miners all over Yorkshire took strike action.
The bloodiest battle between the police and the pickets happened at the Orgreave coking plant in May 1984.
Arthur Scargill employed his tactic to prevent the coke produced to reach the Scunthorpe steel works.
On May 5th 1984, Arthur Scargill amassed the largest picket of the strike so far with at least five thousand miners gathered outside the Orgreave coking plant near Sheffield. Arthur Scargill the leader of the National Union of Minors called on the miners to picket the plant to try and stop the British steels coke convoys. The picket of at least five thousand was met by police from ten different counties.
The trouble started at about 9:00 when the pickets spotted the first convoy. They started to battle with police on horse back. Smoke bombs, bricks, stones and ball-bearings were thrown and fencing torn up. Both of the sides involved blamed each other for the bloody riot. Arthur Scargill stood by his miners as hundreds of police formed lines surrounding the miners to stop the preventing them getting to the convoy of coke lorries. The fierce clash between the police and minors resulted in the arrest of 81 minors. Ambulance men wearing protective riot gear lead casualties of both sides safely away. Altogether 41 policemen and 28 minors were injured during the bloody clash.
After the clash with the police Arthur Scargill said that “We've had riot shields, we've had riot gear, we've had police on horseback charging into our people, and we’ve had people hit with truncheons and people kicked to the ground.”
He also went on to say that “The intimidation and the brutality that has been displayed are something reminiscent of a Latin American state.”
However the minors clash with the police at the Orgreave coking plant failed to have the desired effect as the pickets failed to stop or even restrict power supplies to the nation.
Arthur Scargill eventually managed some success when a total of 15,000 pickets besieged a coke depot at Saltley, near Birmingham. The police were forced to close the gates and prevent supplies leaving.
The fight of the union against the conservative government ended up in the unions losing out.
