A MINER who was picketing on the front line when police mounted their brutal attack at Orgreave voiced his anger yesterday at the IPCC police watchdog’s refusal to investigate the violence.

Chris Skidmore was a young miner at Yorkshire’s Bullcliffe Wood colliery — one of first six pits threatened with closure — when the strike began.

Today he is chairman of the Yorkshire area of the National Union of Mineworkers.

On June 18 1984, he headed for Orgreave cokeworks outside Rotherham with friends to ask the coke workers to join the strike.

“We’d come to picket and persuade the coke workers they should be with us because it was their jobs as well,” he told the Morning Star.

“I was on the front line against the riot shields. It wasn’t a pleasant place to be. Every so often there would be a barked order, the shields would part and the coppers in the second line would start beating people on the head. Then the shields would close. That went on for some time.

“Then it went berserk after that. It was frightening. I was trying to give first-aid to two lads on the ground with their heads broken open and I thought: ‘I’ve got to get out of this.’

“I remember running back up the hill and could hear horses behind. I looked back and there was a lad from Vale Tempes in Durham. He thought he was coming out to a fair.

“He was sitting on a bridge with an ice cream. Next thing the coppers came up on horses and a baton came down and went through his ice cream and smashed him in the face. I will remember it forever — his face contorted with pain.”

Mr Skidmore is a supporter of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign.

When he learned about the IPCC’s refusal to investigate Orgreave, he told the Morning Star: “Words fail me. Being let down by an organisation that is supposed to police the police.

“If it hasn’t got the legal clout and resources to carry out a proper investigation it should have said so two years ago, not gone along with this rigmarole.”

He said a public inquiry is needed into Orgreave.