The demonstrations outside the Wapping plant were not peaceful, although the trade unions maintained that they were committed to pursuing peaceful means to resolve the dispute. Like the miners' strike, large demonstrations were mounted to dissuade workers – in this case, journalists and operators of the new printing process as well as TNT’s drivers – from entering the premises, and a large police operation used force to ensure they were not able to physically stop the movement of TNT’s lorries distributing newspapers from the plant.