AMONG the events leading to the Battle of Saltley Gate was a telephone call from the London headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to the union’s Yorkshire area office in Barnsley.

The call was made on Saturday, February 5.

At the London end was an NUM staff member, researcher Jim Wheeler. At the Yorkshire end was a team of strike activists at the union’s Barnsley picket headquarters.

One of them was Arthur Scargill, then a 34-year-old mineworker at Woolley colliery who was spokesman for pickets in the union’s Barnsley area.

Today Scargill, 84, remembers every detail of what followed, leading to what he says was the turning point in the 1972 miners’ strike; an event which he believes is still a lesson for today’s trade union movement.

Since 1960 the miners’ pay had been falling behind other industries.

In 1969 resentment in the coalfields exploded into localised unofficial strikes.

The 1972 strike was official and nationwide – the first since the miners’ action which led to the 1926 General Strike.

The ’72 strike began on January 9, but commentators gave the miners little chance of success.

Scargill quotes Woodrow Wyatt writing in the Daily Mirror that January: “Rarely have strikers advanced to the barricades with less enthusiasm or hope of success. The miners have more stacked against them than the Light Brigade in their famous charge.”

The telephone call from London, he tells the Morning Star, relayed a message from striking miners in the Midlands.

They were picketing Saltley Gate, a coke depot in Birmingham. The pickets were outnumbered by police and desperately needed reinforcements, he was told.

Scargill told the Morning Star: “I thought, ‘a coke depot?’ I thought it would be a few hundred tons for local people. I had no doubt there would be anything other than that in the centre of a city. But he said ‘can you get as many pickets as possible?’

“It was a Saturday afternoon. I did what I was being asked to do. I phoned every workingmen’s club and miners’ welfare. We sent pickets from the office to everywhere that we knew there would be miners to get as many men to go down as we could. I organised four coaches.”

Four hundred Yorkshire pickets were on their way to Birmingham.

Scargill said: “I was sitting in the office a few minutes after they’d gone, and I thought, ‘there’s something strange, unusual going on. Such a number of pickets for a coking plant?’ I’m going to Birmingham to join the picket’ and we drove down there with Alvin Philips, union president at Woolley.

“I phoned a friend to see what was going off. The only person I knew who would be down there was Frank Watters who was full-time Communist Party area agent.

“Him and Moira Simmonds from Birmingham Labour Party began to organise accommodation.

“The call went out in Birmingham ‘can you put up a miner?’

“I arrived there and there were couples coming in, families, saying ‘we can put up a miner.’

“By midnight everyone had accommodation but with the instruction ‘be at Saltley Gate’ the following morning which was a Sunday.”

His first sight of Saltley Gate dispelled any thoughts about a small depot supplying local homes with fuel.

“When we arrived I’d never seen anything like it in my life,” he said. “It was a Mount Everest of coke.

“There were 700 lorries a day, big lorries, going in, filling up and taking coke to manufacturing industry.”

The arrival of the Yorkshire reinforcements made a difference – but only briefly.

“On that first day we outnumbered the police,” said Scargill. “They weren’t expecting us. Saltley Gate, on that first day, was stopped. Of course, the lads said ‘that’s shown ‘em.’

“I said ‘I’m warning you. Be here tomorrow morning because tomorrow morning they’ll turn up in force. And boy oh boy did they.

“The next morning there were hundreds of police, rank after rank. They were determined nobody would be able to stop the lorries going in.

“All the lorries were driven by scabs. No trade union members.”

Local Labour MPs joined the picket line.

“They came down to the picket which was welcome, but the violence was intense,” said Scargill.

Striking miners from South Wales, Scotland and Lancashire joined the picket line.

“I reckon by that time we would have had 3,000 pickets. I can tell you what it looked like on the picket line. It looked like a battle from history.”

But Scargill said it was obvious that the miners could not fight alone “with pickets who had been on strike since January 9 and a lot of these lads were tired, including me. We needed support from further afield.”

On the picket line he had already met leading Birmingham trade union representatives, including Nicky Bridge and Alan Law from the TGWU (Transport and General Workers’ Union).

Scargill said Law “was as strong a character as I have ever met in my life.”

Meetings were held where appeals for support were made.

“I spoke at seven or eight meetings that evening including a massive meeting of the TGWU and a meeting of the AEU executive. I didn’t get back to the house we were staying in until one in the morning.”

He said at the meetings there was unanimous support for solidarity action.

The AEU meeting was on the Tuesday night. A decision was made to take action on the Thursday, February 10, to give a day to organise, said Scargill.

“So we had these pledges, but we could not anticipate what would happen.

“On Thursday, February 10, 1972, we went to the picket line as we had been doing for six days.

“All the miners were there. All the ranks of police were there. But looking at the police, they looked uneasy.

“I suddenly realised there was no movement – no lorries, no buses, no cars. The entire area was literally like a pedestrian area.”

It emerged that roads around the depot had been blocked by lorry drivers who were trade union members in response to the appeals for support.

“They’d taken their keys, got out of their cabs and left them blocking the roads,” said Scargill.

“But what happened then I will never forget as long as I live. I looked to my right and I could see thousands of people coming, thousands of workers from the car industry, engineering industry, and they were being led by women who had come out on strike.

“I turned round and they were coming from four other routes to join us. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“I went through the police line and nobody touched me, to where the chief constable and Chief Superintendent Brennan were discussing how to deal with it.

“I heard them say ‘make sure that when they (the marchers) arrive make sure they don’t stop.’ I said ‘not on your life – they’re staying on the picket line.’

“The first to arrive were the engineers led by these women.

“The police were telling them to move but they said ‘we’re not moving.’

“They were piling up. We estimated 20,000 that day.

“There were shouts going up: ‘General strike!’ ‘Heath out!’ All sorts.

“I shouted through my megaphone ‘close the gate!’ and they took it up. It was a chant like you’d hear at Anfield but with a difference. As they chanted they moved forward a foot.

“I knew from radio broadcasts that the home secretary (Reginald Maudling) had given an assurance that Saltley Gate would remain open at all costs. There would be no closure.

“At 11am the chief constable said ‘lock the gates’ and he gave the instruction that ‘no distribution of fuel should leave this facility until this dispute is over,’ because it was unsafe – ‘unsafe’ in the sense that for the first time workers were united and determined that it was going to close.

“It was the proudest moment of my life. I had dreamed that one day workers would come together. And here we were – 20,000 on the picket line with us.”

Scargill made a well-documented speech from the top of a public toilet – even borrowing a police loud hailer to do it.

“I told them that they had not merely gone on strike, not merely marched and joined a picket line. I said ‘today you have marched into history, and you have earned a position in the pantheon of trade union history.’

“As I looked round there were miners and workers from all these industries with tears in their eyes, tears of pride, because we had won. We knew we had won.

“Two hours after Saltley shut, Maudling had to go to the Cabinet and tell them that he had unfortunately been informed that the gate at Saltley had been closed and that there would be no more coke or coal unless it had a signed accreditation from the NUM. You can’t get a better victory than that.”

Scargill said Saltley Gate “was the turning point that led a few weeks later to the end of the strike. The miners had won.”

Today Scargill and other union and political figures are in Birmingham to mark the 50th anniversary of Saltley Gate. The event will start at 11am, the time the gates shut.

“We shall thank the people of Birmingham who gave such magnificent support to us in our hour of need,” said Scargill.

“I hope that people will come and join us.

“One thing that I will be asking is that a monument to that event be erected in Birmingham because it runs alongside the General Strike, the Suffragettes, any event we can think about. They really did march into history.”

Today’s anniversary event will be important to him for another, more personal reason.

“One thing I will be proud of is that my grandson has asked to be there. He is studying politics at Keele University. Arthur Scargill will be proud that his grandson Tom will be there and supporting everything that we did in 1972.”

The 50th anniversary of the Battle of Saltley Gate will begin at 11am in the Priory Rooms, Quaker Meeting House, 40 Bull Street, Birmingham, B4 6AF. Speakers: Arthur Scargill, NUM president 1982-2002, Mick Lynch, RMT general secretary, Ian Hodson, BFAWU president, Ricky Tomlinson, Shrewsbury 24 Campaign, Sheera Johal, Indian Workers Association president. The chair will be Ken Capstick, former vice-chair, NUM Yorkshire Area. Banner Theatre and the Clarion Singers will perform.