IT WAS the day the miners’ strike came to North Ayrshire – and it left scars that still ache to this day.

Exactly 30 years ago this week, an estimated 1000 striking miners descended on Hunterston ore terminal in a bid to stop what they described as “scab” coal and ore being brought in from overseas.

But for every picketing miner, there were two police officers on duty.

More than 2000 cops arrived by the vanload on the first day of the Hunterston dispute, marching two abreast past the roundabout at the entrance to the site.

Their job was to allow dozens of Yuill and Dodds lorries to leave the site carrying coal shipped in to Hunterston from South Africa and South America.

The miners were determined to stop that happening.

It was an extraordinary sight.

The strikers – many from the Ayrshire coalfields, though many miners had come up from the North of England – lounged on the grass banks near the site entrance waiting for the first lorries to leave.

The 20-odd newspaper and TV reporters were herded on to the nearby roundabout to watch the action unfold.

It was a sunny day and the pickets seemed in a good mood, yelling the occasional cat call at passing officers.

At one point, they mocked the cops with mass rendition of the “Can Can” theme.

But the tension began to mount. And just before 12.30pm, mounted officers arrived and took up position.

More and more officers arrived and formed a blockade.

Confronted by such a huge police presence, at a time when most of the miners regarded such officers as a political force working for the hated Thatcher and the Tory party, the jeers and catcalls began.

Then the cry came up: “The lorries are on their way.” The miners began chants of “Here we go, here we go” and “If you hate the f****** polis, shake your fist”.

The relaxed vibe quickly evaporated.

At 12.57 the first of the 39 lorries swept in through the entrance as the pickets surged forward towards the police lines, trying to outflank them.

But the police line held firm and the frustrated miners could only watch and jeer as the lorries sped past them.

It took just three minutes for all the lorries to make it through and then the violence erupted.

Pickets pushed forward on the left and a brigade of mounted police advanced to repel them.

A bottle was thrown, a scuffle broke out and police hats flew through the air.

A band of officers moved right into the crowd in a bid to break it up.

One dazed picket had to be lifted up from the throng.

He was one of four strikers treated for minor injuries in hospital.

The windows of several lorries were smashed.

After that, they would leave the site with wire mesh on their windscreens.

Then the arrests began. Police filled vans with more than 80 pickets over two days.

When the lorries re-emerged on the Tuesday, there were only around 100 pickets left, many having drifted away because of the violence.

The noise from the Yuill and Dodds engines drowned out much of their protests.

Later, Ayrshire Chief Superintendent Harry Corrigan insisted that the police action had prevented possible deaths.

He claimed: “If we hadn’t had the horses, the pickets would certainly have broken through our lines on to the road because of the momentum and someone could have died under the wheels of a lorry.” But South Ayrshire’s Labour MP George Foulkes, who addressed the miners on that day, accused the police of provoking violence by refusing to allow the pickets to speak to the lorry drivers.

One day later, Scottish miners’ leader Mick McGahey arrived at Hunterston – but police refused to let him address the pickets.

He insisted: “The mass picket will return to Hunterston.

"This is not the end of the matter.” The events at Hunterston left their mark on many.

For locals throughout North Ayrshire, it signalled the start of mass lorry convoys heading from Hunterston on routes never designed for such heavy traffic.

And the grass around Hunterston turned black with coal dust for years to come.

As for the arrested miners, there were a few twists and turns in store.

One local sheriff had loudly announced at a curling dinner that no pickets would be getting legal aid in his court.

He was overheard by defence lawyers for some of the accused, who reported him to the legal establishment.

The sheriff was taken off the case.

And the legacy of the dispute?

For years, National Union of Miners chief Arthur Scargill was accused of leading his workers into a political battle to prove a point.

Yet his claims that PM Thatcher had made a political decision to shut down most of Britain’s coalfields were proved correct by documents issued at the start of 2014 under the 30 years rule which banned Cabinet documents from being revealed.

As for the Ayrshire mines... apart from open cast production, they are long gone – and the miners with them.