A former official at a miners’ welfare club sent a committee man sprawling through the ladies’ toilet door after being accused of drinking the bingo money.
Trouble flared after the pair argued at the Fallin Miners’ Welfare.
Alexander Reynolds, 63, who had served at least three terms of office on the club’s committee, clashed with current committee man Dickie Maxwell, 58, at a dominoes night.
According to Mr Maxwell, Mr Reynolds swung a punch at him at he came out of the gents, which caught him above the left eyebrow.
According to Mr Reynolds, it was Mr Maxwell who threw a punch, and he had simply “pushed” the slightly-younger man away in self defence.
Either way, Mr Maxwell went flying through the half-open door of the ladies’ loo next door.
He crashed to the floor, with his head against the ground, bleeding profusely from a cut above the left eyebrow, which doctors had to use five stitches to close.
After a two and a half day trial jurors took less than 15 minutes on Friday to find a charge of assault against Mr Reynolds not proven.
Stirling Sheriff Court heard that Mr Reynolds, a retired Stirling Council lorry driver who had never been in trouble in his life before, and Mr Maxwell, a security guard, had both grown up in Fallin, home until it closed in 1987 to the last coal mine in Stirlingshire.
They had known each other all their lives.
Mr Maxwell, an unpaid member of the Miners’ Welfare management committee for five years, said he had gone down to the club on the night of the incident, September 29 2015 to watch a dominoes competition, when Mr Reynolds walked in.
Mr Maxwell told the jury: “We started speaking about who got paid and who didn’t get paid.
“I said that when Mr Reynolds was on the committee he got paid for it, and now we don’t.”
Mr Maxwell admitted that both he and Mr Reynolds, who had last served on the committee in the 1990s, were “probably as bad as each other”, and voices were raised.
Mr Reynolds said Mr Maxwell had alleged that during his tenure in office he had used part of the bingo proceeds to buy beer for himself.
In court, Mr Maxwell denied saying any such thing.
Mr Reynolds allegedly challenged Mr Maxwell to go outside for a fight – an invitation Mr Maxwell said he ignored and following which Mr Reynolds left – but when he went to the toilet at the end of the evening he claimed he emerged to find Mr Reynolds waiting for him.
He said: “When I came out I noticed the light was out in the foyer. He punched me and I fell, partly into the doorway of the ladies toilets.”
The blow smashed his glasses, required hospital treatment, and would leave him with a scar.
As he walked home he decided to call the police.
Reynolds, of Fallin, denied assaulting Mr Maxwell to his severe injury and permanent disfigurement.
He told his solicitor, Brian Allison, he had simply been waiting in the foyer “to get it sorted out”.
He said: “I just wanted to have a friendly discussion with Dickie Maxwell, to say dinnae accuse me of something I haven’t done.
“He’d said that when I was on the bingo I was taking money from the bingo and using it for my beer money.
“I wasn’t very pleased about that, and he’d just kept going on about it.
“I’d been getting a bit wound up with his allegations and somebody had said ‘Dickie you’re going a bit too far’.
“But as soon as he saw me he lashed out.”
He said he simply “shoved” Mr Maxwell away.
“As soon as I shoved him, he fell into the ladies’ toilets,” he added.
Both men said they had consumed six pints of lager, but neither was drunk.
During the UK miners’ strike of 1984-85 the Polmaise Colliery at Fallin was reputed to be the only one in Britain where support was so strong that there was never any need for pickets.
The Fallin Miners’ Welfare was a regular venue for journalists and TV crews covering the strike, and famously pickets sometimes gathered there before travelling to other collieries.
