Today I remember of one of the 20th Century's most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens.The Battle of Orgreave, which took place during the1984 Miners strike,which resulted in an all out military operation by Margeret Thatcher's Conservative cabinet. The miners' strike of 1984-85 was the longest lasting and most bitter industrial dispute of the second half of the 20th century in Britain. It had a huge impact on virtually every subsequent industrial and political development.
On June 18th 1984, 6 to 7,000 striking miners and their supporters gathered to picket Orgreave cokeworks near Rotheram in South Yorkshire. The miners wanted to stop lorry loads of coke leaving for the steelworks. They thought that would help them win their strike, and help protect their pits and their jobs. The police were determined to hold them back. The number of officers was unprecedented. The use of dogs, horses and riot gear in an industrial dispute was almost unheard of. Some of the tactics were learned from the police in Northern Ireland and Hong Kong who had experience dealing with violent disorder.
During the subsequent court case a police manual was uncovered which set out the latest plans to deal with pickets and protests. Police vans and Range Rovers were fitted with armour so they could withstand the stones being thrown by some in the crowd. The miners suspected the whole operation was being run under government control.
Many believe Orgreave was the first example of what became known as “kettling” – the deliberate containment of protesters by large numbers of police officers. It marked a turning point in policing and in the strike. Police directed pickets to an area of land which left them hemmed in on three sides.Before this event the miners had been stoically out on strike for about 12 weeks, during which they had been assaulted on picket lines, with individuals being handcuffed and beaten without any cause or provocation.
At Orgreave the miners after being herded together. were savagely attacked by Police cavalry in full riot gear under the jurisdiction of Thatcher's Government attacking fleeing miners with long swaying batons as Miners ran for safety. It saw the police going berserk under state orders, repeatedly attacking individuals wherever they sought refuge, as they fled into a nearby Wheatfield and into the community of Orgreave, where the police carried on their pursuit through the streets. It resulted in scenes of ugliness, fear and menace, as all concepts of Law and order that the constabulary were supposed to withhold were abandoned. The police frenzy at Orgreave was consciously designed to batter the NUM into submission.
Far from the liberal ideal of a politically neutral body serving the public the police were used at Orgreave to further the anti-socialist rampage which dominated Thatcher's 1980's. As Michael Mansfield QC wrote :"They wanted to teach the miners a lesson, a big lesson, such as they wouldn't come out in force again."
At the end the day 95people were arrested, for no crime whatever, with over 39 strikers being injured, many severely. Following Orgreave, the police conducted a deliberate and co-ordinated attempt to frame arrested miners for one of the most serious events on the statute book - the offence of Riot. No police officer has ever been prosecuted or even disciplined for their role in the terrible events that occurred.
The miners strike lasted until March 1985, during which it politicised a generation of people, sadly however at the end hundreds of mines closed afterwards and many miners faced redundancy. And dizzy with her own success, Thatcher began a policy of deindustrialisation of British industry and further impoverishment of working class and middle-class people.
The miners strike of 1984 was one of the longest and most brutal in British labour history. A heroic community fighting for jobs and survival was wholly denigrated and depicted as violent by the majority of the British media, at the time. Orgreave marked a turning point in the policing of public protest. It sent a message to the police that they could employ violence and lies with impunity. It was only a year after Orgreave that the so-called “Battle of the Beanfield” took place, with violent and unprovoked attacks by the police on New Age travellers, followed by large-scale wrongful arrests. And more recently there have been examples of police “kettling” demonstrators in London for several hours – a kind of pre-emptive imprisonment. With the Government’s Trade Union Act aiming to further restrict picketing, the right to protest in public is in serious danger.
In 2012, the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC), was formed to campaign for a public inquiry into the policing of events at Orgreave following the success of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and revelations about corruption in South Yorkshire Police. But in October 2016 the Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced that there would be no statutory inquiry or independent review.
In 1991, South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners who had sued for assault, false arrest and malicious prosecution, but the force still publicly denied any wrongdoing by any officer.In March the Right Rev Dr Peter Wilcox, the bishop of Sheffield, revealed that the Home Office had also declined to support his proposal for an independent panel to consider the Orgreave events.
In advance of the 35 year anniversary , he said: “Questions remain unanswered which are not going away. In the fullness of time, these questions must be addressed thoroughly and openly, so that wrongs can be put right and so that individuals and communities can move on from a deeply unhappy piece of history. I gladly repeat today my call for a formal, public and independent process of inquiry.”
Up to a thousand workers from both Yorkshire and across the country marched to the 35th Battle of Orgreave memorial rally on Saturday.They marched from Orgreave Lane in Sheffield across the bridge and past the farmland in which the state-orchestrated police attack on striking miners took place on on June 18th 1984.
Other victims of injustice marched with them: workers blacklisted in the construction industry, victims of the Grenfell fire disaster represented by the Fire Brigades Union and Shrewsbury 24 campaigners seeking justice over the imprisonment of striking building site workers in the 1970s were there.
Speaker after speaker at the rally expressed determination to continue the Orgreave campaign until truth and justice are achieved. Prior to speeches the Women’s Socialist Choir gave a rendition of their Orgreave song ‘Time for Truth, Time for Justice, Time for Peace,’ to warm applause.
A spokesperson for the Orgreave Justice Campaign then said: ‘Take note, we are not going away! We have been more active than ever in the last year and we had the biggest reception we have ever had at this year’s annual Durham Miners Gala.
‘We also had a guarantee from Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn that a Labour government would hold a workers inquiry into what happened at Orgreave in 1984.
‘So the international solidarity that was built up throughout that strike still prevails today. We’ve spoken at over 100 events and meetings – so don’t forget to keep asking us.
‘And now we know we’ll get an inquiry when we get a Labour government. Jeremy Corbyn told us: “The next Labour government will launch an independent inquiry – because there are so many questions that need to be answered”.
Today I pay tribute to the miners who led the fight against the Thatcher government to defend jobs and trade unionism. After 35 years it is more important than ever to establish the truth about who was responsible for organising the police rampage on this day. Sadly for the 95 miners who were arrested, their families, comrades and others, injustice at Orgreave remains unresolved. Now is the time to keep demand an independent inquiry into the police brutality that happened on that day from home secretary Sajid Javid. Addressing the past is also a way of confronting the continuing abuses of the present.
