A film by Yvette Vanson
This will be shown on Saturday 27th July at 3.30 pm at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon during the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
What happened at Orgreave?
Forty years ago on 18th June 1984, at Orgreave coking works near Rotherham in the north of England, the National Union of Miners (NUM) organised a mass picket of the miners in an attempt to stop production.
The Miners national strike had been underway for several months at this stage and there had been some minor confrontations between pickets and the police.
However on this occasion the police, adopting military style tactics, attacked the miners, they charged the miners on horses, used dogs to attack individual miners and savagely beat many with batons. Many miners were injured and dozens were arrested. The brutality displayed by the police was quite shocking. It was not a battle, it was a riot by the police. Dozens of miners were seriously injured and many still suffer effects to this day. Over 90 were arrested, however when an initial 15 were put on trial for rioting and unlawful assembly, the trial collapsed due to issues with statements from the South Yorkshire police ( who were also involved in the Hillsborough Disaster just over five years later.) Repeated calls for a public inquiry into the violence of the police on that day, some 40 years ago have been largely ignored by the British establishment.
The events at Orgreave left a very bitter legacy in miners communities and many commentators have since stated that something changed forever in Britain on that morning, in many ways it represented a display of the iron fist of Thatcherism. The miners strike lasted a year and resulted in defeat for the NUM and the end of the coal industry and their communities.
Photographer John Harris’s stark image of the policeman on his horse attacking Lesley Boulton as he swung a long truncheon at her head leaves an indelible memory in many people. She had earlier shouted at a policeman to get an ambulance for an injured miner, the policeman swung round his horse and charged at her. Luckily a miner behind Lesley pulled her back by her belt and the blow missed. (See top right photo on the 30th Anniversary banner below.)
For up to date news on Orgreave and the calls for a public Inquiry visit the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign at www.otjc.org.uk
The Cork Mother Jones Committee showed this film with the permission of Yvette Vanson at the 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, and again at the 2015 festival when General Secretary of the Durham Miners Association, the late Dave Hopper, who was present at the “battle” gave an eye witness account of the events.