ORGREAVE: What it was and why it matters today

The Background

Orgreave Coking Plant, now demolished, stood on the outskirts of Sheffield, just 8 miles from Hillsborough Stadium , scene of the Hillsborough disaster on 15th April 1989, in which 96 Liverpool supporters were, as the jury at the recent inquests determined, unlawfully killed. The plant supplied coke to the power station at Scunthorpe some 20 miles away.

In March 1984 the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) launched a national strike in response to the plans of the National Coal Board (NCB) to close a number of pits. The NCB claimed that it only wanted to close 20, but the NUM maintained – and subsequent events proved them right – that more than 70 pits were on the NCB’s hit-list.  In the decade after 1984 the  coal– mining industry was effectively destroyed,  with devastating consequences for the miners, their families and their communities.

The NUM called  for a mass picket outside the coking plant on 18th June 1984, aimed at disrupting the supply of coke from Orgreave to Scunthorpe. It followed a series of  smallerdemonstrations at the plant in May and early June. Whereas in the first three months of the strike police forces around the country had done their utmost to prevent would-be pickets from reaching  the colliery where they planned to demonstrate, on this occasion, June 18th,, the police fell over themselves to be “helpful” guiding and ushering miners to the site, in particular to the “topside.”

Many of the pickets were surprised by this, for  them, unusual display of courtesy, and some were – rightly, as it turned out – suspicious. The “topside” was a field bounded at its bottom by a cordon of police officers six and more deep, blocking access to  the plant; the two sides were patrolled by dog-handlers with their charges; and a steep railway embankment and railway lines marked the back of the field. The only “escape route was over a narrow railway bridge at the top corner of the field, and this led into Orgeave village, with domestic housing on the right and a small industrial estate to the left.

“The Battle of Orgreave”

What happened on 18th June 1984 was not a battle but a rout.  In the lull that followed a number of what were by then ritual but ineffectual pushes against the police lines, the officer in charge of the police operation, Assistant Chief Constable Clement, ordered the police lines to open. Dozens of mounted officers , armed with long truncheons, charged up the field, followed by snatch squad officers in riot gear, with short shields and truncheons. The miners fled up the hill towards the embankment and the railway bridge. Many of those who couldn’t or wouldn’t run were assaulted with batons, causing several serious injuries, and dragged back through the police lines to the temporary detention centre opposite the plant.

Several similar charges followed, forcing the miners up into the village, where they tried to find refuge in gardens and in the yards of the industrial units opposite. The police ran amok, clubbing and arresting miners  indiscriminately. In one piece of TV footage a senior officer can be heard shouting “bodies, not heads”, but the number of head injuries sustained meant he was largely ignored.

It was a miracle no-one was killed. One officer was seen on television straddling a defenceless miner on the ground and battering him repeatedly about the head with his truncheon. Because the incident was witnessed by millions  on TV,  South Yorkshire Police interviewed the officer, PC Martin from the Northumbria  force , two days later. PC Martin said: “It’s not a case of me going off half cock. The Senior Officers, Supers and Chief Supers were there and getting stuck in too – they were encouraging the lads and I think their attitude to the situation affected what we all did.” The papers were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who advised that PC Martin should not be prosecuted. There is no record of PC Martin being disciplined, either.

Altogether 55 miners were arrested at the topside, and all of them were charged with “riot”, an offence which at that time carried a potential life sentence. A further 40 men were arrested at the “bottom” (Catcliffe) side . They were charged with the marginally less serious offence of  “unlawful assembly”.

The trial

It was not until May 1985, almost a year later, that the case came to court.  15 miners, all charged with riot, appeared at Sheffield Crown Court in what was intended by the Prosecution to be the first of a series of trials. The trial collapsed after 48 days of hearings, when the Prosecution  abandoned the case. It  became clear as the police witnesses trooped in and out of the court  that many officers had had large parts of their statements dictated to them, and that many of them had lied in their accounts, claiming to have seen things they could not have seen, or that they had arrested someone they had not. 

It also emerged in the course of the trial that new and unlawful public order policing tactics set out in a secret police manual had been used for the first time at Orgreave. At times the trial descended into farce, and the Prosecution had little option but to drop the cases of the remaining 80 miners.

There was never any investigation into the conduct of the police for assaulting, wrongfully arresting and falsely prosecuting so many miners, nor for lying in evidence. Not a single officer faced disciplinary or criminal proceedings. Five years later, however, and a year after the Hillsborough disaster, South Yorkshire Police  agreed to pay a total of nearly £500, 000 to 39 of the miners, without admitting that they had done anything wrong.

Why is Orgreave in the news now?

Because Orgreave and Hillsborough are part of the same story. Both cases have at their heart South Yorkshire Police, although Orgreave involved officers from many other forces  as well. The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign is pressing for a full and independent inquiry into what happened, just as the Hillsborough campaigners demanded an impartial investigation into the causes of the Hillsborough disaster.

The Independent Police Commission (IPCC) decided in June 2015 that, partly because of its limited terms of reference, it would not carry out a full investigation into Orgreave, although ite report contained some serious criticisms of the actions and attitudes of South Yorkshire Police, implicitly suggesting that a wider inquiry was called for.

Both cases, Orgreave and Hillsborough, involve serious wrongdoing by South Yorkshire Police:

At Orgreave this involved the assaults, wrongful arrests and false prosecutions of the miners and perjury in court;

At Hillsborough the inquest jury has now found that the 96 fans died as a result of criminally serious gross negligence by the police, and that the police told widespread lies to try and unfairly blame the fans.

Both cases involve strikingly similar attempts by the police to manipulate the evidence:

After Orgreave junior officers have come forward and said that parts of their statements, supposedly their own personal recollection of events,  were dictated to them by senior officers. Analysis of their statements shows that many do indeed contain lengthy identical passages – which cannot be a coincidence;

In the Hillsborough Inquest many officers gave evidence that they were told not to write up their notebooks in the usual way, but instead to write undated statements on plain paper, which were  then edited, often quite radically, by more senior officers and lawyers acting for the police.

Both cases involve the police colluding with the media to portray a false picture of events and blame the innocent so as to conceal their own wrongdoing and failings:

After Orgreave, encouraged by the police, the media unfairly vilified the miners for provoking the violence when in fact it was the police who instigated it;

After Hillsborough, egged on by the police, the media unfairly blamed the fans for the disaster, accusing them of being drunk, arriving late and trying to get into the match without tickets, an account which the Inquest jury has now roundly rejected.

In neither case has there been any proper accountability for what the police did wrong.

There is a clear and direct  chronological link between the two events:

The way in which the police abused their power at Orgreave, lied about it and got away with it, fostered the culture of impunity which allowed the cover-up after Hillsborough to take place.

Had the police lies after Orgreave been properly and publicly addressed, the Hillsborough cover-up  would never have been allowed to happen.

Why does Orgreave matter?

Orgreave represents one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in this country’s history, and it has never been adequately addressed. It is important that the truth is established and that the police are brought to account.

Many of the miners have been left with ongoing physical and psychological problems.  Many lost their jobs and their marriages and were left with a sense of grievance at their unjust treatment that haunts them even today

Orgreave led to a massive breakdown of trust in the police in the former mining communities (and indeed more widely) and this continues today among the children and grandchildren of the miners.

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 Bill aiming to further restrict picketing,  the right to protest in public is in serious danger.

What needs to happen?

In December 2015 the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign provided the Home Secretary, Theresa May, with a lengthy legal argument, calling on her to set up an independent public inquiry into the policing of events at Orgreave 0n 18th June 1984. We are still awaiting her response.

Such an inquiry could take the form of a panel-type inquiry,like the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which reviews all the documents, a full public inquiry which can call witnesses, or something in-between.

The Campaign would want to  discuss with the Home Secretary the scope and terms of reference of any inquiry set up.

The Campaign is also asking the IPCC to disclose a full, unedited copy of its 2015 report into what happened at Orgreave, so that the public can see whether any of the officers  involved in the manipulation of the Orgreave evidence were responsible for anything similar in respect of Hillsborough.

The Campaign has the support of a large number of MPs and trade unions, including the Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, the Shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham,  and Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC.  We ask all those who support our aims to join the campaign and write to the Home Secretary, urging her to set up an inquiry without any further delay. 

Where can I find out more?

 You Tube Films

Orgreave Justice: https://vimeo.com/148549592

Battle for Orgreave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKPWtA_YzfA&index=16&list=PLckigBFtiYQcd6iPGUS9p5zAF5iQLNw1b

Orgreave truth and justice campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfSPm6kZ1GM&index=2&list=PLckigBFtiYQcd6iPGUS9p5zAF5iQLNw1b

Lesley Boulton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggEug2JQZ7E&index=1&list=PLckigBFtiYQcd6iPGUS9p5zAF5iQLNw1b

Books 

State of Seige by Jim Coulter, Susan Miller and Martin Walker (Canary Press, 1984)

The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners by Seumas Milne (Verso, rev. Ed. 2014) Seumas Milne argues that the breaking of the miners’ union was the outcome of a concerted secret police campaign.

Settling Scores: The Media, The Police and the Miners’ Strikeed Granville Williams (www.cpbf.org.uk 2014) Explains the events which led to the setting up of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign.

Images From The Past: The Miners’ Strike by Mark Metcalf, Mark Harvey Martin Jenkinson (Pen & Sword, 2014) Good narrative of the miners’ strike accompanied by the great photographs of Martin Jenkinson.

In Loving Memory of Work: http://www.inlovingmemoryofwork.com