THE cover-up and lies surrounding the infamous 1984 police attack on striking miners were laid bare by speakers at the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign annual rally in Sheffield on Saturday.
The rally marked the 40th anniversary of the police onslaught during the 1984-5 strike against pit closures and was held two days after the Labour Party election manifesto promised an “investigation or inquiry” into the events at Orgreave.
Arthur Scargill, who was president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the strike, received a rapturous welcome from the crowd of more than 600 people.
He detailed the preparation of the government’s plans for the dispute after the miners’ victory in the 1974 strike and evidence which revealed that 8,200 police had been deployed to South Yorkshire in advance of the picket at the Orgreave coking plant.
“They intended to inflict massive injury wherever they could,” Mr Scargill said. “They were determined to inflict the maximum punishment on strikers.”
He said that, 40 years on, the victims of the police attack deserved to know the truth and that today’s trade union leaders should prepare to fight.
“They should come together in direct action against governments and employers, against all forms of exploitation,” the former NUM leader said.
Solicitor Gareth Pierce represented miners arrested at Orgreave, many of whom faced charges of riot that carried a potential life sentence.
She told of visiting miners in the cells on the day of the attack and seeing the bloody results of the police brutality.
Ms Pierce saw miners “bleeding, traumatised, being told they were facing life in prison,” adding: “They were not arrested. They were seized. There was no pretence at interviewing.”
She said that to defend the miners in court, “our weapon was simple — evidence of what actually happened on that day.”
The defence team gathered photographs of the events and took witness statements.
The result was the exposure in court of police lies such as an inspector’s description of the “sky black with missiles.”
“There were no missiles,” she said. “The police could see they were heading for charges of perjury.”
The charges were dropped, but none of the police witnesses or those who had colluded in preparing false evidence faced prosecution.
Former Derbyshire miner John Dunn said the strikers and their families and supporters should be proud.
“Forty long years of struggling for justice and we are all still here,” he said.
Mr Dunn said more battles were to come and told the rally: “Polish your picketing boots.”
Ms Pierce recalled the rhetoric of Tory ministers during the strike, saying: “They talked in terms of war, in terms of ‘the enemy,’ and when the apex of that war happened, I was not surprised when they called it the Battle of Orgreave.”
She said that Margaret Thatcher’s government and the miners understood that the dispute was a war, but that “most the rest of the country did not understand the enormity and the appropriateness of the terminology.”
Orgreave was “a demonstration of power, of relentless cruelty and what was intended to be the destruction of a union, its members and the communities in which they lived,” the veteran solicitor said.
“That has to be confronted — that governments can do this. They can do it in plain view, despite extraordinary resistance,” Ms Pierce added.
She insisted that the lessons of what happened — and how to resist — must be learned.
