Why didn’t police officers display numbers on their uniforms during the Miners’ Strikes? - Yorkshire Post Letters

The recent articles commemorating the miners strike of 1984 brought back to mind two incidents that happened to me at the time. Although not a miner I was brought up in Stainforth and Hatfield main colliery was the major employer in the village and because all of my immediate family and some of my friends worked in the pit I had a close interest in the strike.

On one of the days that the strike had started to become more violent, myself and four of my work colleagues from a local glass factory decided to have one of our regular trips into the Peak District for a day's fell walking.

As we exited the motorway near Mansfield we were stopped by two police men.They asked us where we were going and I stated our intentions for the day.

One officer said that he did not believe me and accused us of being flying pickets, I opened up the boot of my car and showed him four rucksacks with maps of the Peak District, compasses, four pairs of fell boots and change of clothing for the end of the day.

He still insisted that we were flying pickets and told us to go back to where we came from. On looking for his police number on his uniform both he and his fellow officer had removed them, for what purpose?

We left and re-routed our journey to the Peak District. The second time I came across police officers was on my way home from work I had to pass by Armthorpe colliery and there was a huge police presence and not one of the officers had numbers on their uniforms, again why? It's the kind of thing I would expect from Putin's Russia.