across the road. According to The Observer, the convoy evaded the main roadblock on the A303 by slipping down a side road but were then met with a second roadblock. At this juncture the police claim that some traveller vehicles rammed police vehicles in an attempt to escape the roadblock. At around the same time the police smashed the windscreens of traveller vehicles and arrested occupants. Most traveller vehicles broke into an adjacent field, by driving through a hedgerow according to one source. A stand-off consequently ensued. Travellers made attempts to negotiate with police but the officer in charge, Assistant Chief Constable Lionel Grundy, ordered that all travellers be arrested. There were outbreaks of violence during which several members of the Convoy received head injuries. An ambulance was allowed through to take them to hospital. Police Officer Bernie Lund, who was on scene, claimed that during the stand-off, petrol bombs and sticks were thrown at officers. However The Guardian states that travellers were not armed with petrol bombs and that police intelligence suggesting that they were "was false". At 7pm officers in riot gear entered the field and launched a final attack. Pregnant women and those holding babies were hit by police with truncheons according to The Observer, who also noted journalist Nick Davies stating that police were hitting "anybody (that) they could reach". When some travellers tried to escape by driving away through the field police allegedly threw truncheons, shields, fire-extinguishers and stones at them to stop them. The Observer and The Independent report that travellers' vehicles were smashed and set on fire. One traveller was taken away with a suspected fractured skull. The large majority of the travellers, over 500, were arrested on suspicion of obstructing police and obstructing the highway. One source states that this represented the largest mass arrest of civilians in English legal history, another that it was the biggest figure since the Second World War. There were insufficient holding cells in local jails to hold all those arrested. Convoy members were transported throughout the Midlands and even to northern England. Not all children and parents ended up in the same region. Most of the arrests did not result in successful prosecutions. Traveller Alan Lodge, speaking to the BBC, described it as "an ambush that happened on a small, mild mannered bunch of people". The UK miners' strike had ended earlier in the same year,