I’ve had the privilege over the last couple of days of interviewing an eyewitness who had a ‘ringside seat’ for the infamous ‘Battle of Orgreave’.
This witness, who was not a miner, has shed light on events there that many readers may not be aware of and has underscored key facts about the real reasons for Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s decision on Monday not to allow a public inquiry into events at Orgreave.
The media are glossing over these facts and even most of the rightly-outraged politicians decrying Rudd’s decision are tending to fall into the trap of focusing on the behaviour of South Yorkshire police – when in fact the core of the matter is the arrogance and unaccountability of the Tory party about its readiness to co-opt the apparatus of the State for political ends. A readiness that extends even to illegality.
Read on to find out more. The witness prefers to remain anonymous ‘for the moment’, so he will be ‘X’ in the conversation that follows, while the SKWAWKBOX will be ‘S’ and for ease of reading, his portions are in brown text:
S: Thank you for taking the time to tell us what you witnessed at Orgreave that day in June 1984. You’re an HGV driver, not a miner – how did you come to be there?
X: I was supposed to be delivering some machinery to the colliery or rather I was supposed to go to a workshop nearby for the machine to be commissioned which I actually did. I was a TGWU member and there was never a chance in hell that I would have crossed the picket line, but the location of the workshop meant I didn’t have to.
The situation when I arrived was not as bad as we were led to believe. I was actually working as a bus driver at the time but was on holiday. I had an HGV licence so I used it.
S: So if you weren’t going to the picket line itself, how did you come to be there to see the events?
X: I made the delivery but I was not allowed to back the way I came. I parked up a little way down and joined others on a hill to watch what was going on. When I got there things were just about to kick off, although I didn’t know it at the time.
S: What did you expect to find when you got there?
X: I expected a picket line, men waving placards and all that. Not the army of police that I saw supervising the area.
S: On Monday when Amber Rudd’s decision was announced, Tory MPs stood to describe the striking miners as ‘yobs’, guilty of ‘bullying and intimidation’, as if it was the miners who instigated the violence – as many newspapers at the time claimed. Is that true?
X: Absolutely, categorically not. The police started the trouble and had come well armed – there were too many of them, equipped for battle, not just for policing a demonstration.
I noticed police waving papers at the miners but I and the others had no idea at the time what that was about at that moment. We now know they were waving payslips showing the overtime payments they were getting, to taunt the miners who were only scraping by on union support, but at the time we didn’t know what it was about.
S: Taunting and being prepared are one thing, but you’re saying the police initiated the aggression, too?
X: The miners were standing about, with nothing much really going on. Then police – or what was supposed to be police – rushed in on foot. They split the crowd of miners in two and then the police horses charged while other police continued the attack until the miners regrouped and repelled an attack from ‘police’ who did not have numbers on their shoulders, this was noticed and photographed by I suspect a reporter.
S: How did the miners react?
X: A few of the young lads picked up stones and threw them and some ran to try to help their mates who were getting a kicking, but the majority just turned and tried to get away from the charge.
S: You mentioned that other picketers who had arrived were kept surrounded and away from the main group, even before things had begun – what we’d call ‘kettling’ these days, which many would say shows they knew in advance what they’d be doing.
X: Yes. There were several coaches and minibuses lined up at the side of the road surrounded by police. The coaches were full of people with placards etc. You don’t bring placards to a fight, they just wanted to protest, but there was no way the police were going to let them swell the numbers.
S: You’ve also mentioned that a lot of the police – or not-police, as we’ll discuss in more detail in a moment – were armed with a lot more than standard-issue police gear.
X: Yes. The police with badge numbers had truncheons and the ones on horses had longer sticks. But I also saw a lot of police with no numbers on their uniforms, these were very aggressive and had metal pipes and rods, knuckle-dusters, that kind of thing. They were the first wave to go in to break up the crowd.
S: Pipes and knuckle-dusters?
X: Those without numbers on their shoulders were the main aggressors and as they ran in they were pulling pipes out of their sleeves. They were extremely well organised and disciplined and they went in first. The rest of the properly-identified police came in behind bent over like the TV Pictures showed later.
S: What about the mounted police?
X: Some of those were riding military horses.
S: Military? How do you know?
X: I’ve got mates who used to be in the military. Cavalry horses get tattooed on their rear right foot and I saw horses with those tattoos. Police horses don’t get them.
S: I don’t think you’d have military horses ridden by other than their usual, trained riders. There have long been rumours that the military were involved during the miners’ strike and Margaret Thatcher is now known to have been ‘prepared‘ to bring in the army to ensure government victory. So you believe she did more than ‘prepare’?
X: Yes, there were soldiers there that day.
S: How long were you there at the scene?
X: I was there about one and a half hours. Long enough.
S: Did you see any of the TV and press coverage afterwards?
X: I did. I was shocked to see the BBC news bulletins making it look like the miners attacked the police first, which simply did not happen in the way it was portrayed. It was a fit-up.
S: How did you feel as you watched events unfold and the coverage afterward?
X: I remember feeling very angry at the police, and at the working people who turned their backs on the miners in their hour of need. It was made out that the mines were exhausted and no longer economic, but Bickershaw, for example, had just spent a lot of money on sinking a new shaft and not long after the cables were cut and the shaft was back filled. I used to collect imported coal from Hull Docks take it to Liverpool drop it on the floor Weigh off, then reload the same coal and collect the delivery note, which was now stamped British Coal.
I went to Glasson dock some weeks later and was met by a picket line at which I stopped and turned around much to the disgust of the police. I was sickened more by the attitude of working people towards the miners and the bragging about how many hauliers started their business during the miners strike. the authorities looked the other way at the state of some of the wagons. It was obvious that Thatcher was determined to beat the miners, then she moved onto others. For Thatcher it was all about divide and rule – break the miners and set the pattern, so she could destroy all the other nationalised industries.
They charged some of those miners with riot, which could have seen them go to prison for life – when they were the ones attacked. Fortunately, the charges were thrown out but it shows how determined they were not just to win that battle but to blacken the name of anyone who tried to resist them.
S: Thank you for your time, ‘X’, I really appreciate your willingness to come forward and share what you saw.
X: My pleasure. If we don’t understand what they were up to then, we can’t understand what they’re doing now properly. Young people, especially, need to know what was going on and how low they’ll go.
It’s already known that the Tories were planning to use the police as essentially a private strike-breaking force in order to break up and privatise the nationalised industries long before Margaret Thatcher became PM.
That in itself is damning enough that Rudd and Theresa May would risk the contempt of MPs and public in order prevent an inquiry that would undoubtedly shine a bright light on that fact – especially since the ‘job’ is not finished until the Tories have completed the demise of the NHS.
Police officers have admitted that they were told to ‘use as much force as possible’ against the striking miners, which is hideously shameful. But if it is true that Thatcher’s government used troops masquerading as police officers against British citizens, on British soil, for party-political aims, the Tories very likely crossed the line into outright illegality.
If that’s the case, then Amber Rudd never had any intention of even giving serious consideration to the appeal for a public, independent inquiry. and the whole thing was a deeply cynical charade to cover vile acts.
Which is not exactly out of character for the Tories.
Either way, those claiming that Rudd denied an inquiry because she doesn’t want out-of-control police to be exposed are missing the point. They – and quite likely troops dressed as police – were not out of control. They were doing exactly as they were told, for a Tory plan that had been hatched at least 7 years earlier.
If you have further information that may be pertinent, email me at skwawkbox@outlook.com or place a note in the comments and I’ll be in touch.
“apparatus of the State” should read “apparatus of the Government” WE are the State …
That’s exactly the point!
We are not the state, the state is the governing apparatus i.e. parliament, the monarchy, military, police, prisons, revenue and customs, etc. If you are not employed in one of these departments of government then you’re not a part of the state. A “state” is not a country, it is all of its collective governing entities, including its boundaries.
Errr, no. As you yourself are FORCED to point out, the “governing apparatus” is a separate part of the “State”. Usually called the Government. WE are ALL the state. THAT is the point.
Living in Ripon at the time, we used to see columns of Salford van hire transits leaving Deverill barracks every morning, coming back in the late evening.
Second time I’ve heard this now. Speaking to someone a few weeks’ back the subject got onto politics and he mentioned someone he knew (friend or neighbour, I can’t remember) who swore he saw his own son on the news footage, in police uniform. His son wasn’t a cop, he was in the army.
Well the soldiers should be ashamed then
I heard a similar story but from some ex soldiers. They said they were dressed in civvies and would stand on the picket lines and on a signal would grab some of the striking miners and the Police would arrest them. Had to bite my tongue! Thatcher had given the Armed Forces & Police a wage rise and to these soldiers she was God.
I was told of a story of striking miner on the picket line suddenly coming across his brother who was in the army dressed as policeman , he asked him what the hell he was doing there he replied it’s the same job ain’t it .
It was Maggie Thatcher’s attempt to destroy the unions at all costs, how dare the Tories put her on a pedestal as a great leader, she was a tyrant
I hope Thatcher is burning in HELL for everything she done.
I knew someone at the time whose son was in the army. She told me that he had been part of a group of soldiers who had been given police uniforms to wear. They were then taken to the picket line.
I also wanted to say that this police behaviour reminded me of the first anti-poll tax demonstration which I was a part of. This is often referred to as “Poll Tax riot” but it wasn’t like that. It was a peaceful demo. The police trapped people in Trafalgar Square and then closed in. I saw it. They started and provoked violence. Police behaviour throughout the Thatcher years should all be investigated. In this latter case, people were imprisoned unjustly so Amber Rudd can’t use that excuse for not investigating. I started a prisoner support group in Leeds
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It would strip Thatcher of any dignity
It would expose the Conservative Party to a legal minefield
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This has been common knowledge in mining communities for thirty years. There were armed police at a time when hardly any police were armed, and unmarked police vans that sat very heavily on their wheels, suggesting they were armoured. However, an inquiry would be embarrassing rather than damaging now as practically everyone who made the decisions is dead or retired.
I was military police for 5 yrs and know for a fact that many serving royal millitary police were on the picket lines in civil police uniforms. I’m pretty sure I could still produce photos to prove it. What your mistaken about is how they came to be there. None that I know of or heard of were there under orders. They were,to a man off duty servicemen who went to help friends in the police. A good friend of mine had his back broken stopping a minibus full of ” miners” on their way to picket. The van was packed with baseball bats and other weapons, my friends back was broken with a lump while he lay face down unconscious on the floor.
Civilian policing was the most common future for millitary police. So I hope you can accept that being there was as natural as any non miner support you received. I’m sorry for any caught up in the violence that had come merely to picket, but it’s a simple truth that there was an ultra violent faction to the striking” miners “( I put ” miners” in inverted commas because it’s highly likely many were not).
Was it right ? Not by either side
Should there be an investigation ? Probably not, both sides let themselves down.
Was it a government conspiracy to put troops on the streets of Britain ? Absolutely not.
Thanks for the very interesting comment. But it beggars belief that soldiers could turn out in police uniforms just because they were mates of police officers, without official sanction or blind-eye-turning.
We were actually given police uniforms to wear during the troubles in Northern Ireland to back up the Police during any disturbance alot of the riots during the 90s the majority of the one’s at the Drumcree protest’s were military
Isn’t it illegal to impersonate a police officer? I think you may have just dropped your mates in it.
And any actual police officers lending them kit to do so.
Is it not an offence to impersonate a police officer?
So somebody’s screwed somewhere if the truth comes out. Either the government if the troops were sanctioned, MPs or other. Or the police for allowing the MPs to illegally dress up in spare uniforms and join their ranks. As far as I know it isn’t a crime to pretend to be a miner and support their cause, in fact you didnt have to be a miner to support their cause and join them on the picket lines but it certainly is a crime to impersonate a police officer. At least if it was the government sending the troops in, the soldiers had the defence of just following orders (where have we heard that before?) and the government should be brought to book about that. However, if it were MPs acting off their own backs then they should be brought to justice as they were acting illegally. I think Stu might not actually be an ex MP cos why would he want to drop his mates in it like this. Think he’s more likely a government lackey trying to defect the blame onto the forces so the government can say that this was not sanctioned.
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In the interview the witness says “and then they moved onto the Steelworkers” or words to that effect. Was the Steelworkers strike not in 1980 and the Miners strike 1984/85? I’d always thought Thatcher instigated a confrontation with the Steelworkers to test the logistics of taking on the miners? Neither Thatcher or Scargill came out of the dispute with any credit. The police weren’t angels but neither were the miners, you fight fire with fire.
My daughter attended rallies -her husband was allowed through as he looked after the mine-made sure it was safe-she says she saw ‘policemen’ with no numbers on-convinced they were army.
I saw exactly the same thing when I was invited on a march( with the ladies of moorends soup kitchen)we walk to Parliament ,I to witness the police intimating the miners about how much they were earning,it was awful the things that happened to many to write down,oh and by the way I had nothing to do with anyone working in the pits,I had a shop and none of my family was involved with the mines,I tried to tell a radio station at the time but they wasn’t interest
Well known fact that the military are used by the Police we were dressed as police during the troubles in Northern Ireland if they needed extra bodies for the protest’s taking place
We were used by the Police during the troubles in Northern Ireland dressed up in police uniform during any protest’s
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I know someone who worked for a company that made police uniforms. He said that they had an unusually large order for uniforms in the months before this happened. And is there not some film of police marching. Police don’t do drill.
Excellent piece of reporting. I’m thoroughly impressed and appreciative to have read this. I publish a lot at http://guerrillademocracy.blogspot.co.uk but it’s nothing as good as yours. Thanks. You’ve found yourself a new reader and fan.
I noticed that there was a substational number of (suspected non police officers) in police waterproof over jackets (if you look at the attached photo notice the police in the foreground with their epilettes highlighted as having no ID are wearing these over jackets) These waterproof over jackets jackets were issued to many forces to wear over their normal uniform tops in inclement weather or at night. So these waterproof over jackets with no ID could have belonged to other officers but lent to non police officers – easy way of disguising and a quick and money saving way to provide uniforms. This assumption is now making sense from the stories of Army servicemen being in police uniform. We should pursue this and gather as much verbal and photographic evidence as possible.
It’s not just the police that are involved in this chicanery.. The BBC reversed film footage that night on the news to show the miners throwing missiles then the police charging them. The reality was the police charged and the miners threw missiles in self defence. The whole apparatus of the state was used to smash this strike, and we are still suffering the consequences.
It wasn’t the BBC who reversed the footage; the police did. The BBC just slavishly accepted the police version as the ‘truth’, demonstrating the start of the really sloppy journalism. They actually played it the right way round on the 6pm news but by 9pm had changed to the police version. I remember it well
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In 84 i was in the army traveling to chatham kent from teesside with 3 other soldiers along the A1 just south of doncaster when we where waved into a layby by police.we were ask to get out of our vehicle and when asked why were immadiatley surrounded by 10 officers and grabbed from car flung over the bonnet and seached as soon as we let it be know we werein the forces it all changed and an officer said its ok they’re with us.and said sorry and sent us on our way.if we had been miners what would they have done
There are so many who have heard of this happening. My late cousin was in the army bases in Germany.
He told me that many men were brought back to the UK to go to hotpots of large pickets, dressed as police, without numbers.
Sadly he is no longer with us and his information would be now dismissed as hearsay and rumour.
I was at orgreave from about 8-30 that morning. As a striking miner who lived about 3 miles away I was early. It was so hot many of us took off our shirts and sat about. We watched van after van of police roll up and get out. It was obvious by the way they marched in formation they were not police but servicemen.
The real question is why the Labour governments between 1997 & 2010 didn’t order a public enquiry …
Police shit.
A friend told me that his older brother lost his military ID at a picket during the strike. The soldiers had been ordered not to take their ID – or indeed any ID into the field. He was severely reprimanded for his ‘lack of judgement’ and was taken off the assignment. The ID was – to his knowledge – never found, but POLICE officers were given photocopies of it and instructed to look for it.
Three decades on and people are trying to rewrite history. I was there. I lived near Orgreave, worked in Barnsley and had huge sympathy for the miners, their families and the villages that were decimated by pit closures. There were thousands of genuine miners swelled by other trade unionists, anarchists, members of Socialist Workers Party and other groups hell-bent on trouble. There is no question that these groups started the charges and the TV footage at the time confirms that. I do not know if army personnel were included but would not be surprised if they were. The actions of the police were what one might expect in the USA but not with British policing and was rightly criticised. I don’t know if ‘X’ was really there but his is a very sanitised account of the anarchist element who were organised and came prepared with lots of weapons, many of which we saw left behind litering the site afterwards.
It seems generally accepted that the TV footage was deliberately misleading. Weapons? We’ll see, but v easy to scatter things about after the event to create an impression.
Of course the miners armed themselves – they had no choice. They were protecting themselves from a Police FORCE who had been given the OK to run amok and break skulls. The idea that the lines were infested by others “hell bent on trouble” is absurd. Sure, the SWP were there, AFA and others – but it was a small minority. If the miners had not armed themselves and were unable to fight back, we may have seen a fatality at Orgreave. Because some of the miners were prepared to give back in kind, meant some of the thug like police and soldiers, stepped back.
No. I was THERE – I’m 67 now. My sympathies were with the miners. There was a huge amount of TV footage which showed thuggish action on both sides but that it started with the bussed in activists, not the real South Yorkshire/North Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire miners. The site afterwards was like Glastonbury after a festival. The sheer voiume and range of stones, bars, bats, bottles, even scaffolding items among the crisp and fag packets, cans and other debris could not have been transported in or spread over such a large area. It took weeks to clear. If you weren’t there then don’t rewrite events.
I wasn’t there, but the witness in my article was. You may have been – or may not. I don’t know who you are, but many I’ve spoken to are adamant that the first move was by the police and the footage was recut to appear differently. If you want to come forward as a non-anon, I’ll be happy to interview you as well and put forward your point of view.
I was a child at the time of the miners strike (actually a young teenager).
Myself and a friend cycled from Ramsgate to Richborough to go fishing.
Being young and impetuous and both us and the location being crap for fishing we were sidetracked by a group of police with petrol grinders taking out nearby railings.
Upon approaching a “piss off you kids” comment from a policeman made us leave -not before seeing aforementioned railings being loaded into a police van.
One of us (i forget which now) jokingly commented to the other “those would make great spears”
Later that week i was sitting drawing while my father watched the news and my interest drew me to it when they mentioned Richborough power station.
(As this was right next to our frequent fishing spot).
The report was about a clash between NUM piquets and police and they said “rocks were thrown at police and railings were torn out and used as spears”-they then rolled out a police presentationof these spears and they were…the same distinct fleur-de -leys pointed ones i had seen beeing taken away from the area days before.
So yes. It is easy for evidence to be planted and some poor sod was up on an attempted murder charge for supposedly using these ‘weapons’.
It did teach me at a young age 13/14 not to trust both the police or the media.
By 16 i was an active anarchist (my parents and all around were conservatives so i see this as one of the seeds that changed my psyche!)
My dad was a miner, I grew up literally and figuratively in the shadow of Cortonwood pit. My mum’s brother was a corporal in the army at the time of the strike. He lost his stripes and earned a spell in the glasshouse because he refused orders to come back to South Yorkshire posing as police to help break the strikes. As other commenters have said, this has always been common knowledge in our communities.
There’s much in “X”s account I agree with but he was visiting not living there. The ‘activists’ arrived mainly in self-drive vans and the odd minibus parking in my street and in the residential roads around Woodhouse and Treeton, whereas the miners arrived mainly in coaches. The BBC and ITN coverage that evening showed it as it was. The truth is that the missiles and violence started with small groups among the miners and this needs to be admitted and not whitewashed. But he’s wrong about “the attitude of working people”. Remember, this was Sheffield where British Steel had suffered mass closures of the industry under McGregor and Attercliffe – the home of Special Steels – disappeared completely. There was huge support among working people in South Yorkshire, which was referred to locally as the “Independent Republic of South Yorkshire”. Yes, Thatcher wanted to break the unions and the police were “prepared” because they had loads of intelligence. Scargill was right about the plan for pit closures but he wanted more than protest and confrontation he wanted to overthrow the government. He wanted revolution.
Army was also used, against the people, during the salmonella, Government inspired ‘crisis’, and more openly during the shambolic mass slaughterings of cattle during the Government inspired foot and mouth ‘crisis’.
There used to be a minimum height for policemen. You will see from news footage and pix that many of the so called police were much shorter. Therefore could not have been policemen.
I went through the miners strike as a 21 yr old son of an NCB lorry driver who was on strike for the whole year. When I started my Union rep training a few years later, I met a lady who was down in London on the “Poll Tax” marches. Walking along she spotted her own son who was in the army by the side of the road, dressed as a copper. She asked him “What the hell are you doing here?” and he told her that he was there under orders, despite having objected to going to his superiors. So YES, the tories used troops to police the streets during the miners strike and other civil unrest. They also sanctioned wire taps on miners phone lines (A BT engineer told us our line was tapped after we called them out to check the line) This means that military intelligence were being used against us too I believe, after all you don’t keep a dog and bark yourself do you? The local Staffordshire miners pickets cottoned on to the wire taps and started a code system that swapped colliery names, ie, if they had arranged to picket Silverdale the next day, they would call one another and say that they would be meeting at Holditch, they had lookouts at Silverdale and Holditch in the morning, and saw the police turn up in force at Holditch, only to then have to get back in their vans and race accross the potteries to get to Silverdale where the pickets had actually turned up lol. Eventually the cops realised we knew they were tapping the phones, and posted lookouts at all the pits, then sent their bully boys to the ones the miners turned up at. The cops in Staffordshire also waved their paychecks at my father and his workmates, saying “Keep it up lads, were making a fortune in overtime” However, as I have told many of them since, “You’re next” and as the figures on Police numbers and the way their numbers, contracts and T’s n C’s have been decimated, it looks like I was right. People need to realise that all “Police Forces” are corporations, which have to make a profit for their owners, see “It’s an illusion” by John Harris for further info on this point. Wake up folks! 1984 is not just a book, it’s a prophecy, and legislation has just been passed to make it reality, the snoopers charter was ratified this week, banning privacy for all but those who know how to keep it and MP’s who have given themselves a legislatory exemption. One rule for them, another for us, just as it always has been.
My Dad was a Miner back then and we
all knew then who was to blame, and it was not the Miners. It does not surprise me that the Home Secretary refuses to hold a public enquiry, we’ve been here before with Hillsburgh Tory scum !!!!
I knew a Met copper at this time who said they were all doing very nicely from the overtime they got to go up there and how they were all buying new cars or building extensions etct etc………………
It begs the question why did the labour government not set up an enquiry?? they had years to do so.
Blair’s Labour govt was just as much part of the Establishment.
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