The Miners' Strike- Part Two

As the strike continued with no end in sight, day to day life  became increasingly fraught for the miners, their families and entire communities that had hitherto relied on the pits for employment and, in turn, their continued survival. The Thatcher Government had  progressively tightened legislation around industrial disputes, and had removed state benefits previously  available to strikers' dependents.  Changes to the Social Security Act and the Trade Union Act, the government asserted, made unions more democratic while rendering the negotiating balance between employers and trade unions fairer and more evenly poised.  The reality was that these restrictions tipped whatever equity that already existed firmly in the direction of the employer.  By increasing the financial necessity to return to work, it made things very difficult for a striker, particularly one with a family, to remain on strike for long. The DHSS now declined urgent needs payments for miners families, and assumed that strikers were benefiting from 15 pounds per week strike pay from the union, which, in reality, ceased part way through the strike  due to the apparent lack of sustainable funds.

Scargill's own conduct and management of the strike was being questioned; he might have argued that he had his own enemies within. Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock was one harsh critic of Scargill’s actions. In an interview with The Guardian in 2009, Kinnock said that Scargill possessed suicidal vanity, exploited picket line solidarity and fell right into the government’s trap.  Kinnock was also very critical of the absence of a national ballot;

"...A ballot would have been won for the strike...What it would have done is guarantee unity right across the mining labour force. The strike was ruined the minute it was politicised and in the mind of Arthur Scargill it was always a political struggle…He fed himself the political illusion that as long as the miners were united they had the right to destabilise and overthrow the democratically elected government.  The miners didn't deserve him, they deserved much, much better. My view is Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill deserved each other. But no-one else did..."

Political, ideological and legal machinations aside, throughout the summer and then towards the end of 1984, the human cost of the strike was becoming increasingly plain to see.  For those holding firm, staying solid, money was scarce to non-existent.  One consequence of the tightening of social security benefits  was that strikers' children could not even access school meals, and families lost subsidies for school uniforms.   

Many bridled over the generalised label, enemy within.  The Prime Minister might have argued that she was referring specifically to the NUM leadership, but it was nuance lost on many working class families who had given sons, brothers and fathers not only to the pits, but to the Falklands as well.

Labour MPs had already raised, in the House of Commons, allegations of the malicious delaying of assessments for DHSS benefits, and as winter, and Christmas 1984 loomed, entire communities were surviving on little more than handouts, while shops and local businesses were also suffering, and heading to the wall.   

One miner’s wife told the BBC;

“...Our village, and the people of the village...all they wanted to do was to try to save jobs, and in turn save all the rest that goes with it, your whole lifestyle...I’d been brought up as a miner’s daughter, and my father’s father and his father; they’d  all worked down the mines.  I think it was two thirds at the time, were in the mines, just on our street, so you can imagine a whole village.  It forges you as a family and as a community…”

Inevitably, facing increasing hardship, some miners began to return to work, attracting reprisals and creating irreparable divisions within previously bonded streets and communities.

“...One of the real rules of being a miner is that you always watched each other’s backs, so the fact that everyone stuck together, and then a few started going back...It was, literally, a betrayal.  I can understand why they did, when things got so very very hard, but it was heartbreaking because they were never forgiven.   Their windows were egged, they were ignored, and they lived for the rest of their lives like that…"

Tempers were inevitably fraying. Violence and threats  against working miners intensified and, in some cases, they were escorted to their workplaces under heavy police protection. One miner from Wales, who had made the decision to return to work in defiance of union solidarity, told the BBC at the height of the strike;

“...I’ve been grabbed hold of a few times.  I have  been threatened.  I’ve got to the stage now where I have to creep out of the house every morning...Surely going around with baseball bats and duffing somebody  up to keep them out, that's not solid.   I’ve given them eight months, no social security no nothing, I haven't had a ha’penny from anybody.  You know, what more do they want?...”

One significant consequence of the growing conflict and unrest, was the breakdown of trust between police and people who would, in ordinary circumstances, have been generally supportive of their local constabulary and the work they did.  Miners and their families felt targeted, described the hatred in the faces of police officers, and believed the coordinated, aggressive policing was an organised tactic to intimidate  communities into compliance and retreat.  As one miner’s wife recalled, it was a way of keeping people frightened, and off the street.  

Proud, working families with no history of benefit dependence were now surviving on handouts, food parcels and attending soup kitchens; selling whatever personal items and assets  they could and suffering declining mental and physical health.  Striking miners also no longer received their solid fuel for heating, making life all but impossible as winter took hold.

Donations and offers of support, including countless gestures of personal generosity and kindness, were forthcoming from within, and from outside of the mining communities; including from firefighters and other unions, sympathetic members of the public and local businesses themselves, who were also suffering as towns and villages were economically devastated.  Donations from abroad included support from French trade unions, and chocolates from the USSR.  There also emerged an unlikely ally; the political movement Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, whose members had also suffered at the hands of the police, who would send undercover officers into gay beats on missions of entrapment, outing men and ruining lives along the way.  Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners began by actually collecting money on the streets, and then holding a benefit concert, and subsequently being emotionally welcomed as a group into socially conservative pit villages, grateful for their support.

Gay rights activist Mike Jackson recalled:

“...It was a huge, huge social division in Britain and it completely split the country into two; you were either for the miners or against them, it was as simple as that...The Miners Strike suddenly gave working class people a voice, including working class lesbian and gay people.  We knew this was an attack on trade unionism itself, if the government won that, it was going to be very bad for working class people in this country…”

As the strike progressed, the National Union of Mineworkers itself, and Arthur Scargill personally,  suffered  a number of legal setbacks.  In September 1984, High Court Judge, Lord  Justice Nicholls, found that the strike was illegal, at least in certain regions, on account of the contentious absence of the national ballot.  The court action had been brought by breakaway groups of miners, whom the Judge found should be free to return to work as the picket lines were illegal, and that they should not suffer  any union disciplinary action as a consequence.  The Judge said that the union in Derbyshire had run roughshod over the rights of its members, and that the NUM in Yorkshire should stop discouraging its members from going back to work.  

Quoted by the BBC, Nicholls said; 

"...It is as plain as a pikestaff that without a national ballot, the strike in Derbyshire is unlawful and contravenes union rules..."

Arthur Scargill dismissed the findings and ruled out any implications for the future of the strike on a nationwide basis, deriding the verdict as another attempt by an unelected judge to interfere in the union's affairs.  Scargill was subsequently cited for Contempt, and the union fined 200 000 pounds.  When this went unpaid, the court ordered sequestration of NUM assets.

Scargill was also found guilty of two counts of obstruction, arising from his arrest with the pickets at Orgreave, a couple of weeks prior to the main and most contentious battle between police and pickets at Orgreave Coke Works.  Once again, he was critical of the attitude of the judiciary;

"...I anticipated the same kind of anti-working class sentiment that has been the order of the day throughout this mining industrial dispute..."

There was also government surveillance of key figures in the NUM.   Future Welsh Labour MP Kim Howells was a union official during the strike, and recalled to the BBC;

"...All of us experienced strange events which we took as evidence that our phones were being tapped.  We didn't know who was doing it, mind, we didn't know whether  it was MI5 or the local police station.  But we knew somebody was doing it.  We ran too many operations where the police were there waiting for us, to believe any different..."


Cabinet documents released in 2015 under the Thirty Year Rule confirmed that surveillance of this nature was occurring, not only for operational reasons, but to assist with the tracking down of NUM money which was, according to the government, being hidden offshore to avoid the sequestration ordered by the courts.  

There were concerns about the legitimacy, and political implications, of this level of surveillance, even from the most senior civil servant of all, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong;

"...I'm not particularly concerned about my own name coming out in this context, I am, however, concerned about the conclusions that will be drawn about the involvement of the security service and about the activities in which it was engaged in connection with the NUM dispute..." 

It appears that information obtained by this surveillance, including details of false identities allegedly created to  hold secret NUM funds, was passed onto Price Waterhouse, who were acting as the government's sequestration agents.  The Cabinet Secretary was concerned that the source of the information might leak, and was particularly worried that a related court action in which Price Waterhouse was involved, in Dublin, might result in certain highly embarrassing disclosures, under oath,  in open court.

Sir Robert Armstrong;

"...It could be argued, I think, that it was a legitimate use of interception to seek to discover what assistance the NUM was receiving from overseas in the provisional movement of funds.  It would be more difficult to justify the use of information obtained by interception, to assist the searchers of the sequestrators..."

Kim Howells, who went on to chair a future Labour Government's Intelligence and Security Committee,  described the government's activities around this as a dodgy game, and a very very dangerous exercise.  Interviewed by the BBC in 2015 following the release of Cabinet documents, Mr Howells helped to put the Thatcher Government's anxieties into context;

"...This was very, very sensitive back in 1984-85.  There were still so many paranoias and secrets about even admitting that MI5 existed, or that it was doing the things that it did; let alone trying to defeat a legitimate trade union..."

In the end, following high level and mildly panicked discussions involving, amongst others, the Prime Minister herself, Home Secretary Leon Brittan, and Attorney-General Sir Michael Havers, a government representative met discreetly with lawyers acting on behalf of Price Waterhouse, and as a result, any politically damaging disclosures were avoided.  

Nine months into the strike, former Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, now the Earl of Stockton, and once described by  post-war Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee  as by far the most radical man I've known in politics, made his debut speech in the House of Lords.  Reported in the New York Times, he lamented the deep divisions his country was facing;

Harold Macmillan in 1942

''...It breaks my heart to see - and I cannot interfere - what is happening in our country today. This terrible strike, by the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's and Hitler's armies and never gave in. It is pointless and we cannot afford that kind of thing...Then there is the growing division of comparative prosperity in the South and an ailing North and Midlands. We used to have battles and rows, but they were quarrels. Now there is a new kind of wicked hatred that has been brought in by different kinds of people...''

The 90 year old Lord Stockton, according to the New York Times, offered only measured words of praise for the policies of the Prime Minister, but his speech was very well received, rewarded by an unprecedented standing ovation.

The strike finally ended after 12 months, in March 1985, with the National Executive of the NUM voting to return to work  98 to 91.  Although many miners were no doubt relieved to be getting back to work and earning again, the decision was far from universally applauded.  Scargill faced an angry membership when he announced the end of the strike, and he  claimed at a press conference that the NUM had been abandoned by the wider union movement, and had that it had been facing not just an employer, but also a government, aided and abetted by;

"...The judiciary, the police, and you people in the media, and at the end of this time our people are suffering a tremendous hardship..."

A National Coal Board spokesman declined to claim victory, owing to the fact that, in his estimation,  the coal industry was the side that had actually lost, and was the victim, having lost markets and any remnants good labour relations.  The NCB refused to grant any terms of amnesty for miners sacked during the dispute over picket line and other confrontations, or for damage caused to NCB property, a stance publicly endorsed by the Prime Minister.  The NCB would also be proceeding with proposed industry reforms.  Specifically; pit closures and job losses.

The government claimed that the strike had cost the nation 1.5 billion pounds, while later estimates suggested the amount was closer to 3 billion pounds. The Prime Minister's comments at the strike's conclusion reflected an ongoing theme; her desire for a competitive industry and the freedom of miners to work.  She also acknowledged, at least in part, some of the suffering that had resulted;

"...I want a prosperous coal industry obviously, but the privations some of those families have been through...And they would have been back earlier had it not been kept going by intimidation, and I'm very glad that now they can go back..." 

Read in more detail here, some of Margaret Thatcher's remarks as the strike ended;

Margaret Thatcher Foundation - Downing Street  Press Conference

Arthur Scargill was later interviewed by Sue Lawley, for BBC Radio Four's  Desert Island Discs radio programme.  When asked if he would have done anything differently, he replied;

"...I don't think I should do anything differently, quite frankly...If there was one thing that the miners didn't do, it was to take action before they did...You can see that the strike was created deliberately, by both the National Coal Board, and the Conservative Government.  I had actually warned, in 1981-82, that it was the Coal Board and Government's intention to bring about a programme of pit closures.  Tragically, there were not only many people outside of the mining industry who didn't believe me, including the media, there were also sections of the miners' union who didn't believe me either. They thought I was scaremongering, they thought that I was merely flying a kite..."

Mr Scargill went on to reject Sue Lawley's assertion that the miners had lost;

"...I don't accept that in the end, we lost.  I think that if you look at the strike itself, and take it into context, I think you'll see that it led to an inspiration as far as the labour and trade union movement is concerned, and its often been said in history that people have lost things.  It was said the Suffragettes lost, but as you and I talk here today, Sue, we know that they didn't lose.  It was said that the Tolpuddle Martyrs lost , but when we look back, we know that the trade union movement in this country and in other parts of the world flourished because of their sacrifice.  I think eventually we shall  see not only the triumph of working people in establishing the right to work, we shall see the establishment of socialism because of, not in spite of the miners strike..."

You can listen to, or download, the full Desert Islands Discs interview with Arthur Scargill here:

BBC Desert Island Discs - Arthur Scargill

Various sources state that there were 11 people killed during the strike, including Joe Green, run over by a lorry while picketing at Ferrybridge Power Station, West Yorkshire, and a Welsh cab driver who was driving a miner to work in defiance of the strike.  David Wilkie was killed when a concrete block was dropped from a bridge onto his cab, in an attempt, a court later heard,  to disrupt a police escort and a taxi taking miner David Williams to the Methyr Vale pit.  The miner, Williams, was injured, but survived.

Two striking miners were initially convicted of murder in Cardiff Crown Court, and sentenced to life imprisonment by Mr Justice Michael Mann, who conceded in his sentencing remarks that the Miners' Strike had engendered a climate of violence.  The sentence was later overturned on appeal to manslaughter, and reduced to 8 years for each defendant.  They were released after 5 years, following a campaign championed by Arthur Scargill and Labour MP Tony Benn.

At the beginning of the strike, there had been 173 collieries operating across England, Scotland and Wales, employing over 180 000 people. The BBC reported that, 20 years after the strike, only 20 collieries remained operational , employing 5000 people.  On the 30th anniversary of the strike, Al Jazeera reported on the legacy of the pit closures, stating  that, as of 2014, only 3 pits remained, and that the National Union of Mineworkers' membership, once numbering around 200 000, now numbered around 1% of that amount.  It has since fallen even further. 

Many miners took redundancy payments, and the process of complete privatisation of what remained of the coal industry was completed by the end of 1994. In that same year, a survey of 900 former miners found that 50% had been out of work for at least a year following the closure of their pit.  Some were able to take up retraining schemes, but even those lucky enough to find new fields of employment had taken a pay cut.  

In 2014, the Guardian reported on the fate of the community around Coventry Colliery, Warwickshire, as recalled by Mat Jordan;

"...The coal board houses being sold out from under people, the mine being privatised then eventually closed, demolished and replaced with ubiquitous Barratt estates and warehouses. Unemployed miners were hidden away on disability allowance. The Blair era initiatives didn’t help much either as they encouraged the Barratt housing and business parks. Then the miner’s compensation payments were comprehensively bungled...”

By any objective evaluation, and despite claims from both Scargill and the NCB, the end of the strike resulted in a resounding win for the forces of Thatcherism.  But at what cost?

Further viewing;  BBC Panorama documentary The Coal War, which was made a matter of weeks after the strike began.

Credits and references;

Margaret Thatcher photo-Copyright waived by US Government
London rally photo by Nick from Bristol Link to Source

Neil Kinnock image from the Dutch National Archives Link to Source

Harold MacMillan photograph by Elliott and Fry (disputed)  Link to Source

The Battle for Orgreave (Channel Four Documentary 1985)

Assertions on the legislative changes and loss of strikers' benefits were taken from Wikipedia's extensive article on the strike, noting the verification by primary sources

Al Jazeera Online

Margaret Thatcher Foundation

The Journal (online)

The Guardian

BBC Radio 4-UK Confidential-Desert Island Discs-Report
BBC Word Service Radio-Witness
BBC online- Inside Out - East Midlands (2004)
New York Times

www.georgefairbrother.com

The Miners' Strike - Part One

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;  

The Attlee Government

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...”

The Tories’ relationship with the National Union of Mineworkers had been turbulent, and a number of Thatcherites held bitter memories of what they considered Edward Heath’s capitulation a decade earlier, leading to the subsequent election losses in 1974. With Margaret Thatcher assuming the role of Opposition Leader the following year, Conservative policy began to take a much harder line. The Ridley Report, commissioned by the Conservative Research Department, and leaked to the Economist magazine in 1978, argued for the break-up of nationalised monopolies which were beset with inefficient practices, 'jobs for the boys', devoid of the usual private sector accountabilities, and essentially being run for the benefit of themselves rather than their customers. Freeing up the economy and fighting inflation would be the new priority, rather than the Post-War Consensus objectives of full employment through government spending and a mixed economy comprising of both state-owned and private enterprise.

Read the Ridley Report, in full, here:

The Ridley Report -Margaret Thatcher Foundation

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:

“...At that moment, one of these police officers hit me on the back of the head, with  short shield, down I went onto the floor.  I was covered in dust, I was cut on my arm, I was cut on my leg.  A young lad helped me to my feet...he dragged me, half carried me up the bank...in order to get me out of the battle zone.  Ironically Clements, the Assistant Chief Constable,  at that point,  came over the bridge and concocted this amazing  story, which was completely untrue, that I’d slipped down the bank... and hit my head…The only people who hit me on the head were police, in full riot gear, who’d gone absolutely mad…”

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

Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign

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

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

Hansard
Archived Colliers Weekly

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs- Arthur Scargill

www.georgefairbrother.com

Post sponsored by the Armstrong and Burton book series.