The British
coal industry was nationalised in 1947 by Clement Attlee's reforming Labour
Government. The National Coal
Board, established under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act,
assumed control of 1,647 coal mines, 1 million
acres of land, 100 000 homes and a myriad transport and
infrastructure that had been previously owned by 850 separate
companies. The private coal companies were paid a total of 164.6 million
pounds. The consolidated industry was thereafter managed on a nationwide scale by the Coal Board, which also
controlled mining in Scotland and Wales.
You can read more about the Attlee Government and their programme of reform here;
You can read more about the Attlee Government and their programme of reform here;
Just 173 pits were still operating by 1984, a fraction of the number that had been producing coal during the first half of the century. The coal industry was surviving in its current form through government subsidy and, according to the Thatcher Government, was beset by inefficiencies and loss-making pits that were not only a drain on more modern and profitable operations, but inhibiting the viability of the entire industry. Disputed reports said that the NCB was losing as much as 3 Pounds per ton of coal produced. As a result, British coal was more expensive than the general international rate. The entire industry was crying out for major reform, at least from the Tories' perspective, and now there was a resolute government determined to allow the free market to flourish; to improve productivity and efficiency, and to break the power of the union movement once and for all, along the way. There were obviously going to be major ramifications for communities that relied on the pits for their survival. Union sources suggested that for every 100 mining jobs lost, a further 80 in local communities and related industries would follow as part of the economic knock-on effect.
The Prime Minister said;
“...Of course, we’re always sympathetic about the
loss of jobs. But, how are you going to get new jobs in coal? You’re
not going to get it, by keeping open pits which put up the price of coal
for all that wish to buy it...”
Read the Ridley Report, in full, here:
In early March 1984, Coal Board
Chairman, Ian MacGregor, announced the closure of 20 unprofitable
pits and the resultant loss of around 20 000 jobs. Miners
at Cortonwood Colliery, South Yorkshire, stopped work immediately, and
within a week, more than half of the nation’s miners were on strike.
The BBC reported:
“...Tens of thousands of Britain's miners have
stopped work in what looks like becoming a long battle against job losses. More
than half the country's 187,000 mineworkers are now on strike. Miners in
Yorkshire and Kent were the first to down tools this morning - by tonight they
had been joined by colleagues in Scotland and South Wales...National Union of
Mineworkers president Arthur Scargill is calling on members across the country
to join the action. He is relying on flying pickets to drum up support…”
With
memories of the energy shortages that had led to the three day week under
Heath, this time the government was prepared, having stockpiled
over 50 000 000 tons of coal between the pits and the
power stations. The government also dramatically increased coal imports, as this report in the Financial Times shows;
Matters inevitably escalated
and around a month later, on April 9th, the BBC reported
on violent clashes between police, working miners and pickets.
“...About 100 pickets have been arrested during
violent clashes with police outside two working coal pits in Nottinghamshire
and Derbyshire. The
so-called flying pickets - striking miners bused in from other
parts of the country - targeted Cresswell colliery in Derbyshire and Babbington
in Nottinghamshire. Figures suggest 46 pits are still working out of a total of
176 across the country. Miners are fighting plans to close 20 pits. Police at
Cresswell say they were taken by surprise when around 1,000 pickets descended
on the colliery…”
During this time allegations began to
circulate about the behaviour of the police, including heavy handed tactics,
the prevention of buses carrying flying pickets reaching their
destinations, covert surveillance of union officials, and the infiltration of plainclothes officers into the
picket lines.
“...Six officers and a miner were injured in what a
spokesman described as the worst violence we have had in Derbyshire
since the strike began...Several cars belonging to working miners had their
windows smashed. One miner who apparently defied the pickets and went into work
had the windows of his home smashed...Despite the pickets, an estimated 60% of
the night shift still turned up for work and the colliery was able to
operate...At Babbington colliery, police faced 2,000 pickets and were pelted
with stones when they made more than 60 arrests...Seven officers needed
treatment for cuts to the head and legs. One officer suffered an eye injury and
a union spokesman was also hurt…”
Unsurprisingly the Prime Minister
rejected any criticism of police officers, stating:
“...They have to keep the right of miners to go to
work open and they have done it marvellously…”
There was sufficient concern during
these early stages of the strike for there to be scheduled an emergency debate
at the House of Commons. Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, emphasised the
importance of the rule of law, but assured the House that any complaints of
police misconduct would be investigated, and that there were no impediments in
place for the making of complaints against the police.
Mr Brittan said:
“...(The Police) are in no sense above
the law and have no wish to be. They are the servants of the law and our
principal bastion against those, whoever they may be, who seek by force to
impose their will on their fellow citizens…”
There were allegations and counter
allegations of violence along predictably partisan lines, concerns raised about
the politicisation of the police and questions regarding the power of the Home
Secretary over regional constabularies. Terry
Patchett, Labour member for Barnsley East, spoke of his own personal
experiences, and how the relationship with police had changed markedly under
the current Conservative Government, in what amounted to a concise summing up
of the current state of affairs;
“... I do not intend my contribution
to be an attack on the police, but the Right Honourable Gentleman implied that
the police should never be questioned. I find that worrying. I am anxious about
the infringement of civil liberties, since they are the cornerstone of any
democratic society...I am not sure how unique I am in the House, but I have
experienced being on a picket line. Like many miners, I never intended to do
anything but peacefully picket. However, I was struck and assaulted by the
police on at least one occasion for no reason whatsoever. Let no one try to
whitewash the problems.
I am aware of the frustrations felt and the taunts
made by both sides. Apparently the public are not aware of taunts by the police
during the dispute. In 1972 I was based in Norwich organising over
1,000 pickets in East Anglia. The organisers had daily telephone conversations
with senior police officers. We were asked how many pickets were going to each
place. That peaceful working relationship lasted throughout the 1972 dispute
and it was recognised and honoured. It was successful, and peaceful picketing
occurred. The same relationship existed during the 1974 dispute.
Then came the aggressive determination by the
Tories to dismantle the trade union movement and destroy its influence. The
dispute comes as no surprise to me, because it has been manufactured over many
years by the Government through their trade union legislation and picketing
laws. The Government are even attacking the recipients of DHSS benefits,
knowing that the trade unions cannot afford to pay £15. That is what puts trade
unionists' backs up. Many more vindictive actions have taken place, culminating
in the closure of Cortonwood colliery which precipitated the dispute. Neither I
nor other trade unionists are fooled by what is happening…”
Member for Chesterfield, Tony Benn,
attacked the government over what he saw as the criminalisation of picketing:
“...It is no good the Home Secretary shaking his head because he has done his best to confuse people about criminal and civil actions. The intention of Government propaganda throughout this dispute has been to make it appear that those engaged in picketing methods which have been accepted for many years are guilty of a criminal act…”
Mr Benn went on to raise the issue of
phone tapping and onerous bail conditions for those pickets who had been
arrested. He also described the hardship already facing many
mining families, and expanded on the points made by Terry Patchett regarding
the payment of DHSS benefits.
“...In addition to the points that I have made, the
Government have legislated to deny benefits to those who are on strike.
Legislation provides that those who are on strike are deemed to have had £15 a
week in strike pay. That is using the law to change the facts. One can
say, You cannot have starved to death; you are deemed to have had
breakfast this morning. There is hardship now among many miners' families,
and, in addition to taking away the right to obtain benefits, the Government
have deliberately obstructed the claims.
What we have seen in this dispute is part of a much
wider attack upon the freedoms of our people. The Prime Minister deals with
those who dissent in a plain way. She will abolish local authorities that
disagree with her and ban the trade unions that disagree with her…”
On May 29th, there was the first of two
major conflicts between pickets and police at the Orgreave Coke
Works. Pickets attempted to stop lorries from servicing the plant
and full riot gear was used by police, prompting NUM Leader Arthur
Scargill to describe the police tactics thus;
"...We've had riot shields, we've had riot
gear, we've had police on horseback charging into our people, we've had people
hit with truncheons and people kicked to the ground. The
intimidation and the brutality that has been displayed are something
reminiscent of a Latin American state..."
The BBC, whose reporting of the strike
would later garner controversy over what might now be described as fake
news in favour of the police and the government, reported that smoke
bombs, bricks, stones and ball bearings were thrown and fences torn down. It
was reported that both sides pinned the blame on the other: 81 people
were arrested, while 41 police and 28 strikers
were injured, and the lorries were allowed through.
The second major confrontation between
police and pickets at the Orgreave Coke Works, on June 18th 1984,
which then spilled into the streets of the village itself, remains
one of the most significant events of the 12 month
strike. Campaigns demanding justice for those miners arrested, and in
many cases assaulted and injured by police, remain very active, even
after well over 3 decades.
The
objective of the 5 000 strong picket line blockade, which
included flying pickets from around the country, was to prevent lorries from
servicing the works. Police had previously applied the questionable
tactic of preventing buses with the flying pickets from reaching a
number of pithead battlegrounds during the course of the strike, often
turning buses around many miles from their destinations. However,
on this occasion it appeared that the police were determined to force a
confrontation. As a result, pickets were allowed to assemble near the gates to
the coking works, and then were marshalled into an adjacent field where the
police would attempt to run them off.
For the Channel Four documentary, The
Battle For Orgreave, made in 1985, one picket recalled:
“...On 18th of June, the police actually escorted
us into Orgreave that day, which was strange because normally they’d stop us at
motorways or wherever...We were ushered into this corn field, and that's where
they made us stand, facing a thick blue line of police, probably ten deep, with
all their big riot shields... And they were there, obviously, to
stop us getting down to speak to these lorry drivers at the
gates. There were dogs on right, in the wood, they were only there
for one reason, so we couldn’t go that way. On left, there were a
steep banking and dogs at the bottom of there. Then you’d look behind you,
and once again there were horses, probably seven of them, with police on,
equipped with riot gear. So you actually felt as if you were penned in. Totally. There
was only one way out, and that's up to the top of the village, where there’s a
bridge...”
Other pickets suggested that the change
in police tactics was in response to picketing at Cresswell, where reasoning
and negotiation between the pickets and those attempting to cross the line
resulted in the peaceful closure of the pit.
Miner Dave Smith recalled;
“...We successfully picketed Cresswell
out. No violence. No threats. Just, lads that
were going to work stopped, spoke to us...We put forward our case to
them and they accepted it, turned around and went home. Cresswell
was successfully closed, by 20 men, no problems at all…”
It was after this, it was generally
believed, that the tactics, and the policing attitudes hardened. Roadblocks
were initiated, and the police operations became more militarised, and
personally antagonistic.
“...Media and police would have people believe that
miners were rioting and throwing masses of bricks and lumps of concrete at
police. It weren't like that in slightest...I were there, and the
only incident to me that occurred, a ritual pushing and shoving..it were push
between police and pickets and it happened on every picket
line. Only people that rioted that day were police. They went to
berserk…
“...When they send horses charging at innocent
lads...not even in shirtsleeves, they’ve only got a T shirt on or
jeans. They didn't come armed with knives, and spears,
and things like that. They’d come purely to put a protest.”
Miners described themselves as fair
game, as they were battered by truncheons, threatened and
bitten by police dogs or trampled by horses. Unsurprisingly
the police side of the story was quite different, as articulated later in
rather startling evidence given by Assistant Chief Constable Clements of South
Yorkshire Police;
“...It's no exaggeration to say that the sky was
black with missiles; bottles, heavy machinery, ball bearings; so I sent the
horses in again. They were told to advance at a walk and then a
trot. I wouldn't have been worried in the slightest if people had
been trampled. I could not be held responsible in miners were silly enough to
stay there…”
ACC Clements also said that truncheons
and short shields were not generally used against people running
away, although this is directly contradicted by eyewitness accounts of
countless miners, many of whom were bloodied and bruised, and by police actions
caught on video.
In
the face of the advancing police, the miners were driven from the field to the
village and to the railway cuttings, and a number were forced down a
steep embankment to the tracks. Arthur Scargill himself was,
as one witness described, flattened by short shield-bearing
police officer, however police claimed to be nowhere near the NUM president
when he fell over.
Scargill
himself said:
The battle spread to the village of
Orgreave itself, and people who had not even been at the coke works
found themselves caught up in the rampage. Here are some recollections of the lead-up to what would become an iconic moment;
ACC Clements later described the police operation in the village as humane and compassionate. Comments by defence lawyer Gareth Peirce, however, tell a very different story. She arrived at Rotherham Police Station to act on behalf of a number of miners who had been arrested.
“...I went into the cells, and I suppose I still
feel sick and horrified at what I saw there. I was frightened
because I saw people terribly injured, and I thought two of them in particular,
needed urgent medical attention and might not last...There was blood
all over the place, there were people with dreadful wounds, on their faces,
their legs, their arms and on the back of their heads...So many people and so
badly injured that they didn't look like people who had been arrested by the
processes of the civilian law...This was like the wounded survivors
in wartime. They needed doctors rather than lawyers.
Then we had to go to court in the middle of the
night for the first of the bail applications. The whole process was
so extraordinary, so out of the ordinary...They were treated like cattle, with
contempt, remanded on extraordinary bail conditions with no regard for the
evidence. The prosecution was so cavalier they
didn't bother to produce evidence at court, didn't even take their
papers to court…”
Gareth Peirce also had a few things to
say about the legal process that ensued, and the yearlong torment waiting for
trials, where the defendants were well aware that a sentence of
life imprisonment, for the offence of riot, was a real possibility.
“...It's one thing to physically hurt
somebody. That way you terrorise them, but there is a far different
process which is the one the defendants saw when they went to court, and that’s
the real terror. Of putting somebody on trial in such a way and on
such terms that they remain convinced, whatever the strength of their case,
whatever the iniquities of the prosecution case, they remain convinced until
they’re acquitted that they’re going to go to prison for the rest of their
lives, and that was reinforced from the moment they were in court, by the Home
Secretary strutting around the country talking about
riot carrying life imprisonment…”
Barrister Michael Mansfield later
talked of the militarisation and politicisation of the police in the
furtherance of the government agenda. He stated that it was no
coincidence that the passage of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE)
went through the parliament during the strike, affording police additional
powers of stop and search, arrest, hours of custody and to establish
roadblocks, a key factor in the deterrence of flying pickets.
“...What’s happened over the last year has been the
use of the courts and the criminal law, for political
purposes. Large numbers of miners, 11 000, were arrested
last year, mass arrests on a scale never before seen, again for political
reasons. The result of those arrests have been political
trials. Not in the sense that you might get them in South Africa,
not that people have been arrested on a charge of holding a particular belief,
or that they belong to a particular subversive organisation, but, for some
reason or another, these 11 000 have woken up one morning and
supposedly committed criminal offences. There's no way, you
may think, that such a law-abiding community wakes up one morning
and does that. It has to be that large numbers of police
officers, junior and senior, have been prepared to fabricate evidence against
this community…”
Following the the confrontations at
Orgreave, a total of 95 pickets were charged with riot, and
what was supposed to be the first in a series of trials began in May 1985.
In making the Crown case, the prosecutor said;
“...On Monday, the 18th June 1984, the occasion of
the greatest violence inflicted by the pickets, these defendants committed the
offence of riot. What is a riot? A riot is where three or
more people have gathered together and they have in their minds a common
purpose which they intend to achieve through force. Behaving
in such a way as to terrorise someone of ordinary strength of
character. Each of these defendants went to Orgreave that day with
that common purpose in mind. They intended to achieve their aims by
force, by sheer force of numbers, overwhelming numbers by pushing shoving and kicking. The
cordon of police were there to keep the peace...the law of
this country allows people to go about their lawful affairs
unimpeded. That is our democratic system. If we want to
change the law we use parliamentary democracy, we do not use force. ..”
After 48 harrowing
days, the trial collapsed, and all 15 miners were acquitted.
The website for the Orgreave Truth and
Justice campaign reports;
“...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. One statement with a
signature forged by a police officer simply disappeared from court over
lunch-time, never to re-appear...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, cutting its losses, dropped the cases of the
remaining 80 miners…”
Although the campaign for
justice continues, there has not been any official investigation
into the conduct of the police, and no individual officers have been held to
account, for what the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign describes as;
“...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...”
Read more here
National Union of Mineworkers
In Part 2, We'll be
looking in detail at the personal cost of the strike, and its aftermath; politically and for the miners and their communities.
Miners' Strike Part II
Yvette Vanson's Channel Four documentary, The Battle for Orgreave,
can be viewed in full here. (External channel)
Credits
Orgreave Coke Works photo by Chris Allen Link to Source
Arthur Scargill Photo from Tyne and Wear
Archives and Museum Link to Source
Tony Benn Photo by Isujosh Link to Source
Underground photo from National Library of Wales Link to Source
Underground photo from National Library of Wales Link to Source
The Battle for Orgreave (Channel Four
Documentary 1985)
BBC Radio 4 - Report
BBC Radio 4 - UK Confidential 1984 and
1985
BBC World Service - Witness
Official Website - National Union
of Mineworkers
Official Website - Orgreave Truth and
Justice Campaign
Panorama Special - The Coal War
The Guardian
The Financial Times
The Financial Times
Hansard
Archived Colliers Weekly
Archived Colliers Weekly
BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs- Arthur Scargill
Post sponsored by the Armstrong and Burton book series.
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