Killing of David Wilkie

Kim Howells, the South Wales NUM official who commented on the killing of David Wilkie, later became a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party and served as a minister in the Blair government and later became chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, a committee of parliamentarians that oversees the work of Britain's intelligence and security agencies. In 2004 he said that when he heard that a taxi driver had been killed, he thought "hang on, we've got all those records we've kept over in the NUM offices, there's all those maps on the wall, we're gonna get implicated in this". He then destroyed "everything", because he feared a police raid on the union offices.

On appeal, their convictions were reduced to manslaughter, and their life sentences were replaced with eight-year prison terms, of which they would serve just over half. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, explained that the crime would be murder if the death was a "natural consequence" of the miners' actions, but the legal phrase "natural consequence" was potentially misleading without further explanation. The appeal verdict of guilty to manslaughter was upheld in the House of Lords, in the case R v Hancock. Hancock and Shankland were released on 30 November 1989, which was coincidentally the fifth anniversary of Wilkie's death.

The killing is referenced in the Roger Waters songs, "Who Needs Information" and "Me or Him", on his 1987 Radio K.A.O.S. album.

The two men who caused Wilkie's death, Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, were found guilty of murder by a majority verdict on 16 May 1985 (by which time the strike had ended) and sentenced to life imprisonment. A third man, Anthony Williams, who had been present on the bridge but was found to have actively discouraged them from dropping the concrete block, was acquitted. The life sentences caused an outcry among the striking miners, who felt that the death of Wilkie was not a deliberate act; the strike had ended by the time the verdict was brought in, but 700 miners at Merthyr Vale walked out on hearing the news.

On 30 November 1984, Wilkie's fare was David Williams, who lived in Rhymney and worked at the Merthyr Vale mine, 6 miles (9.7 km) 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 46-pound (21 kg) concrete block from a bridge 27 feet (8.2 m) over the road. Wilkie died at the scene from multiple injuries; Williams escaped with minor injuries.

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.