IN JUNE 1984 the miners’ strike against Tory plans for pit closures had been going on for three months. The cold war was raging. Prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president Ronald Reagan were colluding to boost their nuclear capability while waging class war on their own population. 

Their devotion to monetarism and increasing the role of the private market required shifting politics sharply to the right, just as had happened after the fascist junta in Chile and other oppressive regimes. 

Tory warmongers had tasted a quick victory in their war to maintain control of the Falklands Islands, giving them a renewed confidence and an opportunity to whip up jingoism. 

War and the language of war is the antagonistic discourse they perpetuate and understand. Class war was, and still is, in full throttle.
 
The relevance of the year long 1984-5 miners’ strike will always remain. As we see the TUC mobilising for a massive turnout for the “We Demand Better” national demonstration on June 18 2022 we must never forget or forgive what the Tories orchestrated and the police did throughout mining communities all over Britain and to striking miners at Orgreave on June 18 1984.
 
Mining communities had been thriving. Supporters knew what was at stake and the strike galvanised grassroots trade unionists and community solidarity and support.  

The devastation and social deprivation caused by pit closures has had painful and lasting effects for the working class of Britain. Now even our right to protest is under serious threat from the accumulation of Tory authoritarian legislation.
 
The miners’ strike called by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in March 1984 was about preserving jobs, industry and communities. 

The outcome of the strike, and the government’s carefully choreographed input, became the blueprint for the policing of dissent and industrial relations in Britain. 

The Tories used every means possible to sabotage the strike and ensured that what they said, not what they actually did, was reported to their advantage by their friends in the media, to demonise the victims.
 
The inevitable consequences of austerity measures have resulted in the increase of fuel and food poverty for massive numbers of the population whilst the wealth of the richest escalates. 

The speed at which authoritarian legislation is being introduced to criminalise protesters campaigning against this inequality and injustice, and the right-wing propaganda machine used to broadcast it, is terrifying. 

It is precisely the world the neoliberals longed for when the Tories mounted their determined attack on the NUM and striking miners.
 
Tory plans to destroy the nationalised industries and the trade unions operating in them in the 1980s emanated from the highly successful miners’ strike of 1972. 

We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the mass picket of the Saltley Gate coking plant in Birmingham when the NUM closed the coke work gates and won a significant pay increase. 

This action played a crucial role in the election defeat of the Tories in 1974. The mass privatisation of nationalised industries that was to follow in the 1980s enabled private ownership and control and increased opportunities for the Tories to undermine the negotiating and organising capacity of the trade unions.  

The Nationalised Industries Policy Group 1977 report, produced by the Tory think tank (known as the Ridley Plan), was the Tories’ revenge and their tool to subjugate the powerful NUM. 

The report talked of “battles” with trade unions and regarded nationalised industries as “enemies.” The Tories wanted to wage war on organised labour and destroy the trade union movement. 

They were making clandestine plans for a more militarised police force which would administer violent state oppression while hiding behind the illusion of policing by consent. 
 
The Orgreave processing plant on the border of Sheffield and Rotherham turned coal into coke for the Scunthorpe British Steel furnaces. 

The NUM had been picketing Orgreave to prevent scab lorries moving the coke. They mobilised for a mass picket on June 18 1984 in an attempt to boost morale and add to the effectiveness of the strike. 

However, the state and the police were fully prepared. While thousands of striking miners were gathering at Orgreave from all over Britain, thousands of police were waiting for them. 

It was a scorching hot day, the atmosphere was friendly and good-humoured. Miners were gathering to picket and show solidarity and support for each other. 

They were having a laugh and a good time, some were even playing games of bowls, cricket and football. What followed at Orgreave on that day was a police riot, organised and sanctioned brutality and tactics of the most sustained and vicious kind ever seen in an industrial dispute. 

The miners were lured into a field and violently assaulted by police wearing full riot gear, many armed with shields and truncheons, some on horseback, some assisted by dogs. 

Well over 100 miners were seriously injured and 95 were arrested on false and spurious charges. Charges were then trumped up to unlawful assembly and riot, which could have resulted in a life sentence for some. 

This was gross and excessive punishment for striking for the right to work. 
 
The arrested miners had to wait nearly a year for the case to go to court, with all the stress, upset and anxiety that this involved for them, their families and friends. 

The cases against the charged miners however collapsed due to the police evidence being exposed as completely unreliable by the miners’ lawyers. 

The police were in danger of being outed for committing perjury by making false statements in court and the prosecutions were dropped. 

While some miners were compensated by South Yorkshire Police a few years later, the police never confessed to assaults, wrongful arrests and malicious prosecutions. 

The government never acknowledged their political role in the direction of the police actions and neither they or the police were ever held to account.

The brutal police operations used against the miners all over Britain throughout the strike showed that the Tories had prepared and mobilised unprecedented resources to demoralise, criminalise and discredit the miners, the NUM and its leaders. 
 
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign continues campaigning for an inquiry into what happened at Orgreave and to get justice for the miners. 

Come along and join us at our Orgreave Anniversary Rally on Saturday June 18 2022, 1pm, City Hall, Barkers Pool, Sheffield. If you’re planning to attend the TUC rally in London then please wear your Orgreave solidarity T-shirt and look out for our banner being carried by our comrades from Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.
 
Kate Flannery is secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (otjc.org.uk).