"We had it all in 1984 and they destroyed it," declares Frank Arrowsmith.

"They turned my village into a place where arsonists grew. Drugs. It's only in the last five years they've started building, knocking down the old council estates that have been gutted by arson and drugs."

During the great miners' strike of 1984-5 Arrowsmith was the National Union of Mineworkers official at Yorkshire Main Colliery, in the traditional mining village of Edlington near Doncaster.

He still remembers vividly the snatch squads, hundreds of police on horseback laying siege to communities, the late-night raids on families, children dragged from their beds and the build-up of resentment, anger and contempt throughout mining villages.

The wounds have not healed.

And Arrowsmith says they won't until there is justice for the wrongs suffered by these communities.

"You can't have 11,300 miners arrested and not one police officer," he says.

"There are documents, films, you only have to watch the film from Orgreave.

"We've got lads, witnesses, documents in the village. We think they have a case to answer."

He explains: "We want an investigation into police conduct. We paid for our sins even if we were innocent."

Arrowsmith was born in Edlington.

His family had moved there from the Durham coalfields in the '30s and '40s where the pits were being shut.

In 1964, he left school at 15 - like the majority of his classmates - and went to work with his dad at Yorkshire Main.

Arrowsmith says: "When you look at me granddad, he returned from the first world war to unemployment. Me dad, after four to five years in the second - what did he get? Unemployment. And he had to scrabble about to bring his family up."

The strike wasn't just about what was happening in 1984, this was about generations of Edlington mining families struggling to survive.

Arrowsmith says: "We knew what were coming. We didn't ask for a penny. We didn't ask for shorter hours. We asked for job security."

The violence started early in the strike and escalated quickly.

Arrowsmith says: "The pickets were relatively young in trainers, jeans, T-shirts. The police were well-protected. Riot shields, even fireproofing, big sticks, short sticks, horses - they had the lot. They were really effective at sealing villages and dishing it out."

Every morning after the scab bus made its way into the colliery, Arrowsmith and his friends walked a few hundred yards to the village shop where they coppered up for a packet of fags and a newspaper.

One day was different.

"Someone came running up and said: 'There is hell on down there, snatch squads just come out and snatched six of the lads'," recalls Arrowsmith.

"We happened to walk down the main road having a fag.

"We were about 30 yards from the pit and we could see them, the snatch squads come running up, they got me and another lad. So they dragged us. There were two of them, one on either side of me and they pulled at me fingers so hard they split the web in the middle. I tell you that really hurt."

Arrowsmith was arrested, beaten by police and charged with public order offences, some of which were later dropped.

A near riot took place in Edlington following the arrests.

Miners surrounded the police station in protest, pelting the building with whatever came to hand.

Although it describes itself as a village, Edlington is actually the size of small town. Row upon row of council or pit houses once accommodated 1,800 mineworkers and their families.

Another 6,000 lived and worked in the supporting local economy.

Before the miners' strike, there was one police officer in the village and he ruled, god-like, with his uniform. He didn't need squad cars and riot shields - the village was self-policing.

Trade unionists and pub landlords and ladies were like mini-mayors in their own right, highly respected people.

In those days they, not the police, managed the village. Anti-social behaviour was addressed by parents.

There was always someone in the community who could plumb, or fix whatever.

The St John's ambulance lady was the street doctor.

The working men's club was at the centre of the village. There were several in Edlington. The Top Club, the British Legion and others.

Arrowsmith remembers: "In a typical mining village you got paid on a Friday. There were nobody flashing credit cards about. You'd got what you'd got. You picked your club. Some went to Top Club, some to the Legion - for all sorts of reasons. You'd been in armed forces, family reasons."

The clubs were territorial. Arrowsmith says: "That was where people could find you. It was where you had your weddings, funerals. It was where you belonged. We shared the highs and lows. You never needed a counsellor - you went and talked to your mates."

Trade unionism was woven into the fabric of the village too.

Arrowsmith says: "Union officials were involved in allocation of pit houses, brass bands, football teams, miners' welfare, fishing clubs, social clubs - all did really well.

"It was a powerful animal, the pit."

Until wages improved, holidays were rare in mining families. Children's outings were run every year by the working men's clubs, taking 50 or 60 coaches usually to Cleethorpes - every village did it.

Everybody knew everybody. Whole extended families would go.

Arrowsmith describes the excitement and anticipation of 2,500 people setting off to invade the coast.

"When they got on the bus, each child got a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps. That were the holidays. There was a club official on every bus to make sure everyone that went came back."

The coaches lined the streets on the day of the club trip. Everyone used to march down the village in their Sunday best for a day at the seaside.

The first and only time Arrowsmith went on holiday with his family was to Cleethorpes for a week.

When they were teenagers, they went to Butlins and Blackpool and they had to save up for a year to go.

Arrowsmith says that when they got into their twenties "there were trips to Benidorm and you went on a club trip. Fifty people would save up and go to Benidorm for a week."

There were people born in Edlington who never left. People married within the community. The community loved, lived, laughed and cried together. Arrowsmith says: "People said you didn't have owt in them days. But we didn't lock our doors. People watched out for one another.

"When Cameron came back to power, he needed a slogan - 'the big society.'

"We had the society Cameron wanted. We built it. Not just in Edlington but throughout the coalfields.

"Thatcher ran these villages into the ground. She devastated them. She left these villages gutted."

There is a statue of a miner in Edlington eulogising the blood, sweat and tears at the coal face with the epitaph: "Bloodied in struggle."

Everything this community achieved came from work and strife, and the miners' strike of '84 was their last stand.

Now Edlington is trying to bring back the collective spirit of a traditional mining community.

Last year, the village held an event to open the memorial garden in honour of all the miners who died at Yorkshire Main Colliery.

Arrowsmith says: "When we opened the memorial garden last year, there were people there who had never experienced anything like that. We got on the streets, we had the banners, and the brass bands again. The children were dressed up and we had a good day. It was amazing, there wasn't one anti-social problem in the village - all day.

"There were people dancing, people marching around the village. Eighty or 90-year-old people coming out for the day. That's what we want to do to commemorate the 30 years."

Arrowsmith is busy organising Edlington's celebration of unity on April 5 to commemorate the strike.

He explains: "We want to say to young people - it were a dirty old pit. It did kill and maim people, but it had another side.

"It added economic value to the village, it had collective spirit.

"A march and live music festival is being staged for young people in the clubs to say: 'Listen to that brass band. Learn how that banner was made'," he says, "and what it meant."

Every village was fiercely proud of its own identity.

The pit banners were designed by the miners and were a source of bitter rivalry.

Arrowsmith says: "Your banner was going to be better than Maltby or wherever, and they said the same. Each pit had its brass band and again it was going to be better than anybody else's.

"If you were good enough to get into your village's brass band, you were somebody."

Arrowsmith is chair of the Yorkshire Main Commemorative and Heritage Trust which is managing the celebration of unity on April 5.

But the fight for justice 30 years on remains crucial too.

He says: "We talk to councillors, MPs, the Labour Party to try and get a public inquiry.

"We are talking to a lot of different organisations. Orgreave Truth and Justice is a big one. We are going to try and get it to national level.

"They tortured people psychologically and physically and we need closure on that.

"I'll push that until the day I die."