JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
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Fields Of Orgreave
by Ed Pickford
Police in anti-riot gear move on picketers near the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham
BOB NEWLAND, a former London Recruit, recommends the extraordinary memoir of struggle veteran Kingsley Mamobolo
JOHN GREEN, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Holloway, The Last Journey, Red Path and Elio
Is there a political message in the scenario of a plague of raging zombies in the UK, and kids growing up with it, wonders MARIA DUARTE
PAUL FOLEY picks out an excellent example of theatre devised to start conversations about identity, class and belonging
SYLVIA HIKINS casts an eye across the contemporary art brought to a city founded on colonialism and empire
ANGUS REID applauds the ambitious occupation of a vast abandoned paper factory by artists mindful of the departed workforce
Horses charge across the screen
Not since Peterloo is seen
Such a fight and flight obscene
As on the fields of Orgreave
Truncheons curving in the air
Unarmed victims running there
Justice gazes in despair
At scenes on fields of Orgreave
We don’t see the unseen hand
That conducts this brutal band
Dishing out a lesson planned
Upon the fields of Orgreave
June of 1984
Superstate that Orwell saw
Tyranny of martial law
Runs red on fields of Orgreave
1812 the soundtrack played
To this modern light brigade
Now they hope the shame will fade
Displayed on fields of Orgreave
Orgreave is a can of worms
Deep inside the real truth squirms
Outside cold injustice burns
About the fields of Orgreave
Yes it’s true that no one died
Yes it’s true policemen lied
Failed to jail all those they tried
Snatched from fields at Orgreave
War will live upon the screen
Memories they can’t wash clean
Truth and justice we will glean
From secrets sown at Orgreave
And the new fight has begun …
Ed Pickford hails from the Durham coalfields and is renowned in his homeland as a chronicler of a variety of working class struggles – not least of course the 1984 miners’ strike.
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