The Battle of Orgreave
The Government has refused to hold an inquiry into the most violent day of the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Why is it still controversial?
Why is Orgreave still a hot issue?
Because 32 years after this bruising confrontation between police and miners at the British Steel Corporation coking plant in South Yorkshire, many feel that the truth about the incident has still not been acknowledged. At the time, miners claimed that they were unfairly victimised by police, and then framed for crimes they didn’t commit. In mining communities and trade unions, Orgreave still inspires fury and resentment at the police.
How did the battle come about?
In March 1984, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), led by Arthur Scargill, called for a nationwide strike after the National Coal Board (NCB) announced pit closures. Not all areas went on strike, but the miners that did – particularly those from Yorkshire – picketed those areas that were still working, notably Nottinghamshire. They also disrupted the steel industry, which was dependent on coal supplies. Hence Scargill’s decision, in May, to picket Orgreave. Skirmishes between police and pickets reached a climax on 18 June.
What happened that day?
About 8,000 miners from across Britain assembled early, determined to stop lorries full of coke leaving Orgreave for Scunthorpe’s steel furnaces. Facing them were some 6,000 police officers – including 42 mounted officers, and dog handlers – led by South Yorkshire Police but bolstered by officers from 17 other forces. The police would later claim the miners rioted, launching a “barrage of missiles” and attacking them; that in response they sent in horses, and riot police armed with batons and shields. But the miners, while admitting they had pushed at police lines – a “ritual” at pickets – claimed the police then launched a savage, unprovoked attack, and that stones were only thrown after that. Either way, violence ensued. At least 50 pickets were injured (some seriously, with broken limbs and cracked skulls) and 40 officers. TV news showed horses charging and police beating bloodied miners. A top civil servant said it looked like a scene from the War of the Roses. The Queen was reportedly “shocked”.
Whose story is more convincing?
At the time, the police account was widely accepted. They were felt to be, as then PM Margaret Thatcher put it, upholding “the rule of law”, rather than the “rule of the mob”. To an extent, they were: preventing people from working is unlawful, and such events were often violent. But with hindsight, the miners’ version looks more truthful. Footage showed the police charging first, and the pickets then throwing stones afterwards. (Shockingly, BBC News showed these events in reverse order.)
Did the police account hold up?
No. When 95 miners were charged with riot and violent disorder, their trials collapsed because police evidence was deemed unreliable. In 1991, South Yorkshire Police paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 of those charged (without admitting liability). One policeman told lawyers then that he didn’t want it to go court because “in the heat of the moment, many officers did overreact”. In 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission “scoped” the episode and found prima facie evidence that police had unlawfully assaulted miners and had perverted the course of justice, by giving identical untrue statements afterwards.
Why was Orgreave so significant?
Quite apart from the allegations of police malpractice, it was a pivotal moment in the miners’ strike (see box). The NUM thinks it was “a planned operation to crush the strike”, and this may be true. Flying pickets were usually turned away: yet they were allowed into Orgreave, then ushered into a field and penned in against a railway embankment. It marked the point when police strategy turned from defensive – protecting collieries and “scabs” – to offensive: mass arrests and breaking up pickets by force.
Why did police tactics change?
Thatcher was determined not to be defeated in the way Edward Heath had in the 1972 miners’ strike. On that occasion, a picket at Birmingham’s Saltley Coke Works – also led by Scargill – had ended in the plant’s closure: Heath caved in to union demands soon after, and subsequently lost the 1974 election. A Tory plan penned in 1977, by Nicholas Ridley, had advised creating “a large, mobile squad of police, ready to employ riot tactics in order to uphold the law against violent picketing”: a system was set up to coordinate a national response. Thatcher told her home secretary, Leon Brittan, to “stiffen the resolve” of his chief constables.
What do people think an inquiry now could have achieved?
No wrongdoingshown police how officer effective officiallyhas an ever admitted.inquirybeen disciplinedcan The be Hillsboroughin settlingover Orgreave, long-disputedInquest nor has issues and exposing official cover-ups. Indeed, Hillsborough – which also involved the South Yorkshire Police – would arguably not have occurred without Thatcher’s politicisation of the police. “When they violently charged at miners, lied about their behaviour… and tried to stitch up their victims,” said Owen Jones in The Guardian, “they began a long march that ended in the Hillsborough disaster.”
Why won’t there be an inquiry?
Home Secretary Amber Rudd last week said that Orgreave caused “no deaths and no wrongful convictions”; that there would be “few lessons” for today’s much-improved police; and that the events of 18 June 1984 could not be linked to Hillsborough “with any certainty”. Others noted that the miners had committed many violent offences: Orgreave was “a great victory”, said Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. The police “more or less had to do what they did”. And of course, inquiries are long and costly. Historians “often do a better job”, said David Aaronovitch in The Times, and “are much, much cheaper”.