Miner Versus Minor
Those of us who are old enough watched it on TV just hours after it happened; footage has been shown repeatedly in the years since. This footage constitutes what used to be known as evidence. It’s pretty indisputable because it was recorded on videotape there and then. As for the bits that weren’t captured on camera, the testimonies of those who were present have been circulating for a long time; one was aired again by a serving policeman on ‘Today’ last Friday morning. As the basis for a belated inquiry, it sounds pretty good, no? However, after two years of deliberation, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has announced it will not be conducting an inquiry into the so-called ‘Battle of Orgreave’, perhaps the single most violent episode to have taken place during the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike.
Picketing miners were attempting to prevent the departure of coke from the Orgreave coking plant in Rotherham in 1984 when tensions between them and the police, whose numbers had been swelled by Met heavies imported from London – men with little or no knowledge of the local culture or community – erupted into an unforgettably gruesome clash. Relations between striking miners and police had been largely cordial until picketers from other parts of the country were brought in to bolster the numbers; when the South Yorkshire Police did likewise by calling in assistance it was bound to end in tears – and it did.
With mounted police cavalry charges, the ‘Battle’ tag attached to the day’s events seemed highly apt; at times, it was like watching a local historical society recreate Waterloo – and just as with a military conflict, both sides played their part in the ugly carnage that occurred that steamy June day 31 years ago. And that steamy June day lingered long after the end of the Strike. 95 picketers were charged with Riot, but the foundations of these charges proved to be so flimsy that those cases that reached trial three years later all collapsed, with South Yorkshire Police buying off the accused in an out-of-court settlement. No officers were ever charged for their conduct at Orgreave. It later transpired that several officers present that day had been advised to doctor their statements by senior detectives, something that eventually prompted an investigation into a possible inquiry by the IPCC. Its conclusions were made public last week.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of events at Orgreave in June 1984, and their contribution towards blackening the name of the South Yorkshire Police five whole years before Hillsborough, one of the reasons given for not having an official inquiry into them was ‘The passage of time means that allegations of assault and of misconduct could not now be pursued’. Of the three reasons given, this was the one that caught my ear above all others. That’s right, the acknowledgement that three decades have been and gone since the Battle of Orgreave is deemed to be a legitimate excuse for taking no further action.
On one hand, a plausible reason. After all, it was a long time ago. You’d have to be at least 35 to have any memory of the event, and even then, you’d have been four in 1984 – hardly of an age to formulate an accurate opinion reflecting one’s memory of that day. We all know how fuzzy our early childhood recollections can be. But what if one had been a fully grown adult that day? Old soldiers can often recall events on the battlefield with a clarity that even the advancing years cannot dim. Surely accounts from those over-eighteen who were present can be relied upon? Perhaps – though even then, each account will be taken from a unique perspective, whether miner or policeman, regardless of whether the latter’s recollection had been dictated by a senior officer in the hours following it; and recollections of distant events do alter as the distance grows greater. Maybe the gap between then and now is so wide that the passage of time is a sufficient reason for not extending this saga any further.
But one thing strikes me as odd about this decision. If not conducting an official inquiry into an event that is extremely well-documented in terms of visual footage and in the fact that it can boast hundreds of witnesses is a decision based on the passage of time, and this is viewed as a sensible judgement, then how is it feasible to ignore the passage of time when pursuing accusations of sexual molestation made against an individual, one that has no documentary evidence, one that allegedly took place a decade or more before Orgreave, and one that is utterly reliant on the word of the accuser?
I wouldn’t even attempt to try and chronicle the number of accusations of this nature that have taken place in the wake of Savile-gate; but even observing them from a distance without taking notes, I cannot think of any that were rejected by the police on the grounds of ‘the passage of time’. In comparison to the evidence that could handsomely support an inquiry into Orgreave, the majority of the historical abuse allegations to have made headlines since 2012 have no evidence whatsoever, and even the so-called evidence provided by the accuser has been one person’s word against another, a contradictory mishmash of murky, dreamlike childhood snapshots ‘re-imagined’ by therapists, law firms, victims lobbyists and the police, along with the #Ibelieveher brigade and other pressure groups with an agenda that refuses to acknowledge the possibility of false memory syndrome, mental disturbance or simple avaricious lies.
If ever anyone doubted the existence of an abuse ‘industry’ that requires constant recruits to remain in business, the refusal to question or even examine the plethora of accusations made over the past three years with the kind of forensic thoroughness that those whose job description allegedly incorporates such techniques is something that makes a mockery of the reasons given for not holding an inquiry into Orgreave. 31 years is not thought of as too great a passage of time to investigate an accusation made by a 38-year-old that Mr X and his associates Mr Y and Mr Z routinely raped her when she was seven, despite her parents, family, friends, teachers and GP being utterly unaware of this regular occurrence until the accuser emerged fresh from therapy 31 years later wearing her imaginary abuse like a Jim’ll Fix It badge.
You can’t have one rule for one crime and one rule for another. If a bewildered senior citizen can be subjected to a platoon of porky policemen kicking his door down at the crack of dawn, turning his home inside out and then escorting him from the premises in handcuffs with his PC wrapped in cellophane, exposing him to the kind of interrogation usually reserved for terror suspects before placing him on bail (and in effective social limbo) for twelve months whilst the police then trawl his friends and acquaintances of three decades ago in order to substantiate the accusations of the Victim in the absence of evidence – and all solely due to one person’s unquestioned word – then why can there be no inquiry into something that has a wealth of solid evidence to warrant further action?
I’m not even sure an inquiry into Orgreave would truly achieve anything. It could go on forever, just like Hillsborough or Bloody Sunday, and would it really make those who were witness to the events of that day in 1984 feel any better about what happened? Would it heal all wounds? Possibly not. But if the police can act upon the dazed and confused testimony of a heavily coached Born Again Survivor, surely there are enough grounds to act upon the demands of the hundreds who were at Orgreave? I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. Were a recent graduate of psychoanalysis to claim she’d been gang-raped by half-a-dozen miners whilst the police were otherwise distracted, however, perhaps the decision of the IPCC might well have been different.
Petunia Winegum
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June 15, 2015 at 9:44 am -
I was thinking exactly the same thing:
http://www.thelatestnews.com/when-historical-crimes-dont-count/
and doubtless so were many others, but you are not quite right when you say “you” can’t have one rule for one crime and one rule for another – “they” can.
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June 15, 2015 at 9:51 am -
It wasn’t just Met officers deployed to the Miners Strike. Rural plods from Norfolk and Suffolk, who were considered to be reliable as they had no knowledge of or prior contact with mining communities, and would thus do as bidden without compunction, were shipped North.
Very large sums of overtime and other payments were made to them, which, among other things, resulted in a spree of policemen buying commercial fishing vessels in these two counties.
I’m acquainted with a couple of these chaps (now long retired), and the main reason (excuse) for being shock troops beating eight bells out of miners was the old one; namely “obeying orders”, and being afraid of losing their jobs if they didn’t.
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June 15, 2015 at 9:53 am -
This is what David Icke might call the holographic illusion of reality… perhaps… maybe… who knows… Next case please.
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June 15, 2015 at 9:57 am -
As ever, Winegum hits the ‘sweet’ spot.
In, ever deeply divided not-one-nation Britain, where UK workers are always good enought to fight and die for the Crown. Left or Right, polarized views persist.
Particulalrly since the uber divisive Thatcher’s new breed of fascist stormtroopers, 1980s ongoing. Self justifying their gross invasions of ordinary UK families, from miners then to minors now.
Ever polarized UK, except, increasingly on one cohesive factor, most Britons now can’t trust Brit cops.
Violence flared after police on horse-back charged the miners with truncheons drawn and inflicted serious injuries upon several individuals. In 1991, the South Yorkshire Police were forced to pay out £425,000 to thirty-nine miners who were arrested in the events at the incident. Other less well known, but also bloody, police attacks took place, for example, in Maltby, South Yorkshire.
Quote 1991, falsely caged for 16 years, victim of UK mass injustice, Brum-6/Paddy Hill, just released outside the Old ‘Bullshit’ Bailey’, paraphrased: “In there they can’t even spell the word ‘Justice’ – let alone dispense it!”
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June 15, 2015 at 10:15 am -
Not sure the real problem is the police-persons anymore than the failure to break through at the Somme was the fault of the Tommies.
Keir Starmer to John Whittingdale apropos the Hacking Scandal – 1st April 2011
“I am acutely conscious of the difficulties and risks inherent in piecing together a history of the legal advice given to the Metropolitan Police nearly five years ago based on documents created by, and recollections of, others… ”
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-sport/Keir-Starmer-QC-CPS-01-04-11.pdfThat the cops and any other emergency service will be hung out to dry as expedient is demonstrated by the pointless Hillsborough shenanigan going on. More millions accruing for the lawyers.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:57 pm -
Particulalrly since the uber divisive Thatcher’s new breed of fascist stormtroopers,
Actually most of England (ie that bit of this island south of Watford Gap) was glued to their tellies night for night cheering on the Police and hoping the miners would get their throughly deserved thrashing. Many of my parent’s generation had never forgiven the miners “for betraying this country during the war” and having survived the Shakespearean Winter Of Discount Tent, many felt that the unions, ANY Union, needed destroying as quickly as possible.
I recall a couple of elderly Lefties went from shop to shop in our town trying to collect for the poor suffering oppressed miners. Their ‘take’ after a day’s tin rattling? “3 Yen, a Drachma , 2 dog ends and a grape” , a ton of verbal abuse….and lots of kind offers of rope so Scargill could hang himself.
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June 15, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
That was my recollection too.
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June 15, 2015 at 10:31 am -
Not sure where my Dad worked during the Miner’s Strike, but he did extensive overtime throughout – but he’s always said this:
Most of his time spent on duty on ‘The Miner’s Strike’ involved friendly football matched with pickets and that ‘only a few militant hotheads’ caused problems and there was a mutual respect between the police officers & the pickets.
Then “The Met” who “were always utterly corrupt” turned up.But if an enquiry did go ahead, who’d get the blame?
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June 15, 2015 at 10:34 am -
There must be plenty of retired or dead coppers available.
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June 15, 2015 at 10:48 am -
The Met killed David Wilkie, did they?
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June 15, 2015 at 2:05 pm -
Most of his time spent on duty on ‘The Miner’s Strike’ involved friendly football matched with pickets
This is exactly how the Norfolk Peelers I know described it; “mugs of Tea, often brought by the Miners’ wives, and Footie until Scargill’s mob turned up and the Met went in heavy handed”.
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June 15, 2015 at 10:58 am -
Not to mention the miners killed a taxi driver by dropping a paving slab off a bridge onto his car, and they got off. I don’t remember any miner being killed.
I’m not a big fan of the police, but who knows what provocation gave rise to the violence. The BBC, then as now, had an agenda.
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June 15, 2015 at 11:32 am -
Whether justice is served or seen to be done depends to a large extent on the victims social standing.
The genuine working (not benefit) class, of whom i am one, typified by Yorkshire miners or possibly recent victim Yorkshire girls in Rotherham and other towns, feature low in importance, despised by their rulers (superiors?) none more so than those slightly more equal than others apparatchiks claiming to be socialists whilst feeding from the trough.
Unless of use at any particular moment they are not wanted, it has always been thus…quite why the working class fell for the line that buying your own home raises you to the middle class has always baffled me, but divide and rule rules the day and the working class forget…as my Geordie mate puts it so well…which pot to piss in.The means of winning are unimportant, accounts can be made up history rewritten, the right results bring knighthoods for the chiefs and large pay packets for the troops, for Orgreave events were not the actions of what was once the British police force, indeed the Countryside Alliance found a taster of what happens when the establishment of the day despise you and use their enforcers to punish during their particular protests in more recent years.
Unless needed to fight the establishment’s wars and die for them, or for garnering votes, the working people of this country are, have always been, and will always be, unwanted.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the miners strike and the conduct of all parties, it ended the illusion, and that’s all it was, that British working people could trust the police, that’s not to say there are not decent officers up and down the country who quite likely despise what has happened to their service as much as anyone, but they have as much say about things as we have, none.
I’m sure following orders was a favoured defence for concentration and extermination camp guards.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
The irony now being the “lefties” then were very anti-police… and are, now it suits, pro-police.
Churchill knew the score, he saw it coming.http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-auntie-fascists.html
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June 15, 2015 at 11:33 am -
I remember the Hindenburg disaster.
Oh, sorry I don’t, it must have been watching those newsreel reports over and over again. How can any credibility be given to ‘eye-witness’ accounts after all the ‘reminders’ that have been broadcast on TV?
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June 15, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
You need to brush up on your Moral Relativism, a.k.a. “In my righteous opinion some serious offences, especially those that cross racial or gender-based boundaries, are more offensive than other serious offences”. The comments section in the Guardian provides several examples of this daily.
In today’s world, unsubstantiated alleged historical peodophilia by older men preying on young women is beyond the pale. On the other hand, clearly documented historical miner-bashing by the constabulary is old history, and a bit boring.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:45 pm -
That’s my point. I’m not sure any inquiry into Orgreave would change anything. What I find ironic is the reason given for not conducting an inquiry, when that reason doesn’t apply with regards to historical sex allegations. Orgreave is ‘clearly documented’, as I say, whereas few, if any, historical abuse allegations are. Oh, and thanks for putting words in my mouth in your first paragraph.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:52 pm -
I didn’t mean to suggest for a minute that I was attributing the words to you. Apologies if that was not clear.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:56 pm -
Stories ARE evidence for sexual cases. That is why historic sex abuse is being pursued. There is rarely any recourse to “documentation” in such sex abuse cases and where there is, it frequently leads to acquittal. The law for rape and such crimes is predicated upon an entirely different premise to all other crime. But you are conflating criminal court cases with “inquiries”. There has yet to be an inquiry about child sexual abuse. Where inquiries were carried out in the past on related matters, such as Satanic Ritual Abuse, then most of it has turned out to be just stories, and so it will keep going round and round until someone in parliament has the wit to apply Time Limits on this sort of thing.
This amused me greatly btw. Did you see it? The Triumph of the Leftish:
“The leader of Majorca has become the first government official to apologise for the execution of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8498383/Jews-receive-apology-over-Spanish-Inquisition-executions.html-
June 15, 2015 at 1:06 pm -
The Spanish Inquisition? Jesus, that sets a precedent. When are the Italians going to apologise for what they did to the Iceni tribe?
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June 15, 2015 at 1:12 pm -
And when are the Jews going to apologise for what they did to Jesus Christ!! ….
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June 15, 2015 at 12:25 pm -
No religioso here.
But, since serial psycho killer, Mad Hatchet Henry’s self justified schizoid split from (cohesive if corrupt) Rome. While hypocritically claiming, “Dieu Et Mon Droit, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense”.
Deeply divided, disunited UK falsely posing as ‘purified & unified’ has been an eternal internal 3-class war BIG rail crash at – dysfUnKtion-jUnKtion.
With the major casualties as always 3rd Class underclass.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:36 pm -
It’s an interesting historical fact that on the railways of Britain, there used to be three classes of travel. 1st for the monied (toffs and the nouveax), 2nd for tradesmen (middle class) and 3rd for the unmonied (sometimes known as the working class) . Those who could pay no fare at all were obviously not allowed on the trains, so would fare-dodge. Now, you may think that in due course the second class absorbed the third class and so now we have 1st and 2nd class; but what actually happened was that the powers that be simply abolished the 2nd Class and decreed that from then on, the 3rd Class would be called the 2nd Class. That all happened in about 1956. Only a railway geek might normally know this, but therein, it seems to me, could lie an allegory.
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June 15, 2015 at 12:49 pm -
One of the sad things about the 1984 Miner’s Strike is that it wasn’t a struggle between oppressed, downtrodden workers and an arrogant, uncaring State. Most miners were quite well paid by then, some were very well paid. It was a struggle between those elected to govern the country, and those who would govern another way and were elected by very few; most miners were just unwitting pawns in the battle. Neither were all miners angels – some of the intimidation meted out to some Nottinghamshire miners and their families by Scargill’s stormtroopers would make the battle of Orgreave look like a vicarage tea party, for example.
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June 15, 2015 at 1:11 pm -
What is so often forgotten is that the proposed programme of mine closures in the early 1980s was being approached with caution and concern by the government of the day. Cabinet papers show that they had put together a phenomenally generous compensation package which would secure those being made redundant for a considerable period. A miner with a lifetime of service in a now closed pit would be handed enough money to buy a house, open a business or invest in some other way. The department of trade and industry noted at the time that “this is going to cost us a bloody fortune” but it was considered the only right and proper way to proceed.
The problem was Scargill who was convinced this was his moment to lead a Marxist revolution and so refused to countenance any closures at all, digging his heels in and prolonging the dispute as much as he could. The direct consequence was that many pits remained idle for months, accumulating dust and rendering them unsafe and destined never to reopen. Thus a process which was to result in a managed closure of facilities and generous redundancy handouts ended with entire communities having their focus ripped from them, unplanned and unmanaged and those affected eligible for no more than their statutory due.
It is a tale of untold human tragedy. And all Scargill’s fault.
30 years later and fossil fuels like coal are the enemy and require eradicating, according to the same progressives who wanted the mines preserved back in the day.
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June 15, 2015 at 1:52 pm -
“30 years later and fossil fuels like coal are the enemy and require eradicating, according to the same progressives who wanted the mines preserved back in the day.”
Very true. I well recall the utter visceral hatred with which subsidies to nuclear power was treated by those same progressives back in the ’70s and ’80s. Now that heavy subsidies are dished out to ‘renewables’ of all sorts, we hear not a peep.
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June 15, 2015 at 2:42 pm -
Thatcher’s “Downing Street Years” memoir explains how they deliberately maximised “oil-burn”; that is to say there were oil-burning power stations with lots of spare capacity. However her government held off bringing them all on stream at first so as not to alienate the miners who were working (which was goodly percent from the start). Divide and rule seemed her watchword. If Scargill had had his men with him, he would never have been defeated. The government kept careful note of the statistics and it was the moment that over 50% of the miners were at work that the strike inevitably collapsed. She is very critical of the way MacGregor and the NCB managed their side of the affair, whereas the media version was always that MacGregor was her puppet. Most of the time she seems to be wringing her hands and saying that it is the NCB’s job to manage, not the governments and that the law must at all times be upheld. Another big aspect she mentions is that she favoured the NCB pursuing the NUM via Civil Law on the grounds they refused to hold a Ballot. However the NCB refused to do so. It was two miners in the end who pursued the matter in the civil courts, won their case and when Scargill refused to comply with the court ruling, the NUM funds were sequestered and the miltants were no longer able to be paid and like men of principle would, they stopped turning up for the protests. Follow the money. It seems to have been that sequestration that led the NUM to flirt (probably unsuccessfully) with Gadaffi, who was already a known funder of the IRA.
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June 15, 2015 at 1:44 pm -
I see in http://www.parliament.uk the following quote:
“The Mines and Collieries Bill, which was supported by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, was hastily passed by Parliament in 1842. The Act prohibited all underground work for women and girls, and for boys under 10. ”
Noting that the copper in the photo appears to be taking a swing at a young woman, what’s the chance that she was not a coal miner? If not, then what was she doing there? Frankly, having lived in several mining areas, I was always led to believe that getting women and children out of coal mines was a social advance. Perhaps she was an office worker from the pit and was Brassed Off.
One of the problems of a photograph is that it does not show what led to the incident, nor what followed. Once a photo has iconic status, people don’t even ask.
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June 15, 2015 at 2:45 pm -
As far as I’m aware, I think the woman in the photo was a photographer herself.
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June 15, 2015 at 2:49 pm -
A journalist? Let’s hope he followed through. I suspect it was a moment of threat only, because by my interpretation of that horse’s moment of momentum, if he’d connected he’d have taken her head clean off.
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June 15, 2015 at 2:22 pm -
A fact that is often overlooked is that the vast majority of coal mines closures where carried out not by the Thatcher Government, but by that of John Major. What really did it for the coal mines was the privatisation of the Central Electricity Generating Board in the early 1990’s and the availability of relatively cheap North sea gas (the so called dash to gas). Once free of state ownership the newly privatised power generators were no longer obliged to buy coal off the NCB (paying twice the world going rate) and for the majority of the expensive deep coal mines it was it was immediate financial death.
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June 15, 2015 at 2:48 pm -
One significant difference between the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ and historical child abuse is that we know that child abuse continues, so investigating past incidences of it may reveal some truths to inform future policy. Both Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday involved significant loss of life, which Orgreave didn’t. If you start holding inquiries into historical events such as industrial disputes, where do you stop? You could find ‘injustices’ in any number of industrial disputes, not just Orgreave. Grunwick, perhaps; or maybe the battles of Wapping when Murdoch broke the power of the print unions?
I’m sure there’s a cadre of dedicated far-left activists that would love to hose taxpayers’ money at investigations of old class wars long since lost, but most of us would rather, if inquiries are to be held at all, they be held into matters the examination of which might inform better future government or policing, hopefully for the benefit of the population at large.
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June 15, 2015 at 2:55 pm -
At the risk of drifting away from the topic at hand, I have the vaguest recollection that the picture above (or perhaps a similar one) had been ‘shown’ to be misleading, and the actual incident (on videotape?) involved the rider losing control of the horse, and trying to regain his balance with his free (batten-wielding) hand.
I don’t wish to defend police brutality, or try to rewrite history, but does anyone recall there being doubts about the accuracy, for want of a better word, of this photo?
Looking at the person in the foreground, one could almost imagine that they are not so much braced to be smashed over the head with a big stick, as just showing concern that someone is about to fall off a horse…could even photographic evidence be unreliable at times, or after a long time, when we already know exactly what happened?
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