It is well known across the trade union movement and former mining communities that Police forces across the UK were instrumental to Thatcher’s success in defeating the Miners Strike of 1984/85. No clearer was this seen than in the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ in 1984. The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign say that Orgreave was more of a rout and police riot than a battle, echoed by Michael Mansfield QC in 2012 stating “the police wanted to teach the miners a big lesson such that that they wouldn’t come out in force again.” The police responded to picket surges with over-use of force including mounted horse charges, severe beatings of picketers and ‘snatch squads’ to arrest them.
95 miners were arrested at Orgreave, 55 were charged with “riot”, an offence which at that time carried a potential life sentence, whilst a further 40 men were arrested the other side of Orgreave site and charged with the marginally less serious offence of “unlawful assembly”.The trial collapsed soon after it started and the prosecution abandoned the case as it became clear 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. There was though never any counter 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.The police then in 1990 paid miners paid nearly £500, 000 to 39 of the miners, without admitting that they had done anything wrong.
The 2014 National Union of Mineworkers’ analysis of the Cabinet Papers relating to the strike rightly point out that before the strikes the Thatcher Government’s planned to equip, train and prepare the police to the highest level in order to deal with violent picketing in any industrial disputes against their economic restructuring efforts. It also importantly notes that whilst the Home Secretary at the time’s Personal Files are still being withheld by the Government we cannot know for certain whether direct orders on tactics and the use of police forces were given by the Government.
However, the recently released Cabinet Papers show through numerous pieces of evidence that to satisfy Thatcher’s desire to have the police act like her own private army, the Government was at the very least responsible for undermining the constitutional independence of the police. They also, through pressure to arrest more striking miners, encouraged bad practices in the policing of pickets and prosecution of those arrested, leading to serious wrongdoing and injustices against miners by South Yorkshire Police that would feature again 5 years in the Hillsborough Disaster.
You can join us at the annual GMB Campaign for Justice Conference in Liverpool, Orgreave is on the agenda.
