Strike: An Uncivil War (15)
Directed by Daniel Gordon

 
JUST days after the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Orgreave, the most violent confrontation between miners and police during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, comes a hard-hitting documentary which sheds new light on the Thatcher government’s involvement in both. 

On June 18 1984 thousands of miners picketing the Orgreave coking plant near Sheffield were confronted by around 6,000 police, many armed with short shields and batons and others on horseback, who charged the miners, brutally beating them up.

The official narrative was that the police had been pelted with a non-stop barrage of missiles by the pickets before taking action. The chilling film footage shot by the media and the police themselves demonstrate that this was a flagrant lie. 

Former police officers also reveal how they were instructed to lie in their statements, claiming that the miners were rioting and violent. When they objected they were told it wasn’t a request.

Daniel Gordon’s tough in-depth film features previously hidden government documents and never-before-seen archive material which show how Thatcher’s government gave the police paramilitary powers and the go-ahead in a secret manual, which Parliament never saw, to use whatever force necessary to defeat the strikers. 

Ex-miners who were at Orgreave give harrowing accounts of the police brutality they witnessed and underwent on a day that started off so well. They are clearly still traumatised by those events 40 years on. 

The documentary also states how Margaret Thatcher was hell-bent on revenge for the miners bringing down the Heath government.

She was determined to destroy them and their union in a pre-planned operation that built up and instructed the police while all the time claiming no government involvement in a dispute which divided families and communities. 

Coalmining villages were decimated by the pit closures. The way the National Coal Board under Ian MacGregor lied about the plan is demonstrated by new documents, and Thatcher and her government did nothing to provide alternative employment for the thousands who were to lose their jobs.

Describing the striking miners as “the enemy within,” Thatcher showed her contempt for Britain’s working class. 

No-one has been held accountable for Orgreave and in 2016 the Conservative government ruled out an investigation into policing at that time. With a new report out this week providing fresh evidence, and Labour promising to hold an inquiry if they win the general election, the miners may finally get the justice they have been searching for. Outstanding.

Out in cinemas June 21.