I submitted a post on the Forum a couple of months ago on an unrelated topic about my experience of the police. Howard was the only one to make a comment.
Here it is again. Whilst on a peaceful picket outside the Eastern Docks during the P&O strike in 1988 I found myself facing a policeman who I knew and lived opposite to me. We were doing a bit of shouting, nothing violent. The policeman in front of me said "Alec, you are doing it all wrong, have a surge now and then". My reply was "no thank you ?????? (he is still about now so I will not mention his name) we are doing quite nicely without having a surge".
They wanted us to make a surge so that they could get their batons out. We didn't take the bait and our picket went on peacefully.
On the whole we had a good relationship with the police but there were one or two bad eggs amongst them. We were told at one period that the "Met" were coming down and they would sort us out.
