JIMMY TAYLOR recently indicated that young police officers were the perpetrators of violence during the Miners’ Strike (HAS, Apr 26) .

I came from a mining family and worked down the mines for a period.

I totally disagree with his assertion of who was responsible.

I was a policeman during the Miners’ Strike at places such as Nottingham, Derbyshire, and Durham.

I was involved at Murton Colliery when striking miners fired ballbearings into the bodies of police officers.

I was at Easington, when we were bricked, and pelted with bottles of urine and lumps of wood.

Police vehicles were bricked from miners in the side streets.

In Nottingham, I was involved protecting families, that is wives and children, of working miners.

These people were threatened on the way to the shops and to and from schools, and in their own homes by South Wales and Yorkshire miners intent on causing trouble.

Yes there were police officers who overstepped the mark, but I can assure Mr Taylor that the striking miners caused more mayhem then any police officer.

As he will know, had Arthur Scargill given all miners a ballot, none of what took place would have happened.

J Stephenson, Redcar