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.
