David James Wilkie (9 July 1949 – 30 November 1984) was a Welsh taxi driver who was killed during the miners' strike in the United Kingdom, when two striking miners dropped a concrete block from a footbridge onto his taxi whilst he was driving a strike-breaking miner to work. The attack caused a widespread revulsion at the extent of violence in the dispute. The two miners were convicted of murder but the charge was reduced to manslaughter on appeal, becoming a leading case on the issue of the difference between the two offences. Background Wilkie was working in Treforest, Mid Glamorgan as a taxi driver, driving a Ford Cortina for City Centre Cars, based in Bute Street, Cardiff. He was regularly engaged in driving non-striking miners to work, as the bitter industrial dispute had made them targets for physical retaliation by those miners who were on strike. The Merthyr Tydfil area was said to be the strongest in support of the strike of any mining area in Britain; it is situated in South Wales, where a large percentage of Britain's remaining coalmines were situated. There had not been much mass picketing in South Wales during the conflict, as there had been in many parts of England, because there had been so few strikebreakers. Killing On 30 November 1984, Wilkie's fare was David Williams, who lived in Rhymney and worked at the Merthyr Vale mine, away. Wilkie was driving the same route as he had done for the previous ten days. He was accompanied by two police cars and a motorcycle outrider, and had just turned on to the A465 road north of Rhymney at the Rhymney Bridge roundabout, when two striking miners dropped a concrete block from a bridge over the road. Wilkie died at the scene from multiple injuries; Williams escaped with minor injuries. Reaction The incident led to a decrease in public support for the striking miners, and to an increase in the number of workers in other industries who crossed miners' picket lines (e.g. at power plants). Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "My reaction is one of anger at what this had done to a family of a person only doing his duty and taking someone to work who wanted to go to work." Kim Howells, speaking for the South Wales National Union of Mineworkers, blamed the attack on the attempts to persuade miners to return to