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Justice for the miners
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends a compassionate and angry portrait of Orgreave that demonstrates, with evidence, the illegal agenda of the Thatcher government
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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.
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ANGUS REID speaks to Daniel Gordon about his new film Strike - an uncivil war
The 40th anniversary of the 1984-5 miners’ strike will bring renewed demands for an inquiry into the brutal police attack on miners at Orgreave in South Yorkshire. PETER LAZENBY reports
CHRIS KITCHEN, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, reminds us that the defining industrial battle of the last century isn’t over until there is full justice for Orgreave's victims — and for miners’ pensions