The Battle of Orgreave
25th Anniversary 2009
The Miners' Strike 1984
In 1984 the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) called their members out on strike to protest against proposed pit closures. Leading the miners was Arthur Scargill. Opposing them was the Tory Government under Margaret Thatcher who were determined to destroy the power of the trade union movement. Sadly neither Arthur nor Margaret were able to see beyond their very considerable nose ends and the vicious dispute lasted for a year and at its most simplistic, ended up destroying Britain's coal industry.
There were many clashes between police and pickets but none of them more violent than the clash in a small South Yorkshire mining village that came to be known as the Battle of Orgreave.
On the 18 June 1984 there occurred at the Orgreave coking plant one of the strike's most violent confrontations, begun in a field near to the plant and culminating in a cavalry charge through the village of Orgreave.The Battle of Orgreave
The NUM organised a mass picket of the Orgreave coking works for June 18, 1984, with the intention of blockading the plant, and ideally forcing its temporary closure. Some sources would have it that MI5 infiltrated the union and passed on the details to the police. The powers that be are much more likely to have simply bugged the phones. I was a union rep in the 1980s myself (different union) and I well remember that during one particular dispute it was very obvious that my phone was bugged. I was also subject to a campaign of silent and misdirected calls which I now seen were meant to be intimidatory. Whenever my mother phoned and began one of her long complaining diatribes I used to think of the poor b****r at the other end and had a very good chuckle.
The mineworkers on one side were represented by between 5,000 and 6,000 pickets from various parts the UK. On the other side were between 4,000 and 8,000 officers many of them bussed in from other forces. Only a handful of these had been trained in updated riot tactics following the Toxteth and Brixton riots, while most had little or no experience in dealing with similar events. There were between 40 and 50 mounted police and 58 police dogs. There were no female police officers and only a handful of female picketers.
The arriving pickets were escorted to a field to the north of the Orgreave plant which was surrounded on three sides by police. On the fourth side to the south was the Sheffield to Worksop railway line run. Some of the strikers played football for a while but as the numbers increased on both sides so did the tensions. In all crowds there are always a few hotheads and I expect that there were some on both sides. Things seem to have played out this way. There was some throwing of stones and bricks by the miners and doubtless quite a few insults. This was sufficient for the Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Clement to use the standard tactic of deploying a cordon of long-shielded police in front of his ordinary officers. The first casualty about 8am seems to have been a policeman who was hit in the face by a brick and taken to hospital.
About this time the lorries arrived to fetch the coke from the coking plant. The miners jostled the police in an attempt to break the lines and prevent the lorries reaching the plant. Shortly afterwards, Clement ordered the mounted police to go forward which caused the picketers to retreat. The horses stopped about 30 yards ahead of the police line and then withdrew. This confrontation permitted for the lorries to pass, and the tension on the field mounted. There was a second push by the picketers which was followed by a second mounted response and this time the whole police line advanced the 30 yards. There was increased stone throwing which increased the tensions and the miners were warned that if they did not retreat backwards for 100 yards, short shield squads would be deployed. Short shield squads known as Police Support Units (PSUs) (police in riot gear, with batons and short shields) were a new development and would represent an offensive rather than defensive approach to riot control, so most of the miners would never have heard of them let alone know what they would do.
The miners refused to move back so a third advance with mounted officers followed by the short shield squads began. There was general panic amongst the strikers, and an increasing amount of hand to hand fighting between the two sides with police PSU wielding their batons. The police repelled the picket line and then withdrew again to their original positions so not unnaturally the picketers move forward again, stone in hand.
At 9.25am the fully laden lorries began to leave the plant. The picketers tried to stop them but were again prevented from doing so by the police. At this point of thereabouts NUM leader Arthur Scargill walked in front of the police lines for a few moments and there was a lull in the proceedings when most of the picketers headed to Orgreave village for refreshments. As the day was turning out warm (in more ways than one) many of those left behind whipped their shirts off to get a bit of sun. The police however, in full uniform and riot gear, seem to have had a major problem with supplies that left them without drinks let alone brekkie. However, many police (including the long shields) were stood down during the lull.
There is confusion and debate about what happened next. The police claimed that a lorry tyre was rolled close to their lines, and that stones were again thrown. Another account blamed an argument between miners and police. The situation flared up again so the police chose to make another further advance more substantial than before. The pickets were now outnumbered by the police force had no option but to retreat across the railway line, some via the bridge and some down the embankment and over the rails. At this point some of the picketers tried to fight back but were arrested. The fighting escalated: the police brought out their truncheons to clear a way through the miners and soon reached the bridge which they took and held on the field side. A very handy nearby scrapyard provided missiles for the picketers to throw at the police and a car was dragged from the yard, put across the road and torched.
The police continued with their tactic of short-range charges and more miners were injured including Arthur Scargill. Then the police were ordered to advance and the picketers were forced into Orgreave village with a new police line forming to prevent their return to the field. However the stone-throwing continued so about 20 mounted police were ordered to advance. This finally resulted in the dispersal of the crowds, although several police officers ran in pursuit and reportedly attacked some of the fleeing miners. More stoning resulted in a further cavalry charge down Rotherham Lane where the police now charged pickets and onlookers alike. An iconic moment was captured on film as a mounted police officer with a baton was snapped trying to hit a woman who was photographing the scene.
This woman was Lesley Boulton,a member of Women Against Pit Closures, who claimed that striking miners were:–
"sitting or standing around in small groups", adding, "there was really not a lot going on. A lot of the men had taken their t-shirts off and stuffed them in their back pockets. It certainly wasn't the sort of thing you'd do if you were planning to attack a seriously armed police force - they had their long shields, all their protective gear on, batons, helmets on. You don't confront police like that in nothing but a pair of jeans and trainers. So I say quite categorically that there was no intention of the miners to attack the police. I myself, with a lot of other miners, was forced to run away and take refuge."
Finally, the police withdrew back to the bridge, and despite continued stoning they held their line. The remaining miners built barricades from scrap, but by mid-afternoon the stone-throwing had stopped. None of the reports I consulted mentioned anything after this so presumably everything fizzled out, the ambulances came and fetched the injured, the buses came and fetched away the opposing sides and poor old Orgreave was left with the cleaning up bill.
The Aftermath
Records indicate that 51 picketers and 72 policemen were injured during the confrontation. 95 arrests were made and the police brought a series of prosecutions against these picketers for riotous behaviour, unlawful assembly and similar offences. A number of these were put on trial in 1987, but the trials collapsed, all charges were dropped and a number of lawsuits were brought against the police for unlawful arrest. South Yorkshire Police later awarded £425,000 compensation and £100,000 in legal costs to 39 pickets in an out of court settlement.
The Re-enactment
A dramatic re-enactment of Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave took place on 17 June 2001 at Orgreave, South Yorkshire. This was a version of what happened on that day, orchestrated by Howard Giles, a historical re-enactment expert and former director of English Heritage's event programme.
Summing Up
I have read letters and articles written by both sides about the Battle of Orgreave and there seem to be a number of differing, even widely divergent views of what happened on that day. Conspiracy theorists would have it that army special forces were introduced under cover of police uniforms but whether this was to quell or to stir the situation is as much open to speculation as their actual presence there at all. I have tried to present a reasoned view of big boys behaving badly but if you disagree with anything please let me know and I'll be delighted to air your views. It will be interesting to see the government reports released under the 30 year rule: that is if they haven't been lost in the flood.