The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between
pickets and officers of the
South Yorkshire Police
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) is the territorial police force responsible for policing South Yorkshire in England.
The force is led by Chief Constable Lauren Poultney. Oversight is conducted by Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings.
T ...
(SYP) and other police forces, including the
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
, at a
British Steel Corporation
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
(BSC)
coking plant
Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ...
at
Orgreave, in
Rotherham
Rotherham () is a large minster and market town in South Yorkshire, England. The town takes its name from the River Rother which then merges with the River Don. The River Don then flows through the town centre. It is the main settlement of ...
,
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham.
In N ...
, England.
It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985
UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.
Journalist
Alastair Stewart
Alastair James Stewart Order of the British Empire, OBE (born 22 June 1952) is an English former journalist and newscaster. Formerly presenting for ITV News, he joined GB News as a presenter in 2021. He has won the Royal Television Society's New ...
has characterised it as "a defining and ghastly moment" that "changed, forever, the conduct of industrial relations and how this country functions as an economy and as a democracy". Most media reports at the time depicted it as "an act of
self-defence
Self-defense (self-defence primarily in Commonwealth English) is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in ...
by police who had come under attack". In 2015, the
Independent Police Complaints Commission
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was a non-departmental public body in England and Wales responsible for overseeing the system for handling complaints made against police forces in England and Wales.
On 8 January 2018, th ...
(IPCC) reported that there was "evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners,
perjury
Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...
by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers".
Historian
Tristram Hunt
Tristram Julian William Hunt, (born 31 May 1974) is a British historian, broadcast journalist and former politician who has been Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2017. He served as the Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke ...
has described the confrontation as "almost medieval in its choreography ... at various stages a siege, a battle, a chase, a rout and, finally, a brutal example of legalised state violence".
71 picketers were charged with riot and 24 with
violent disorder
Violent disorder is a statutory offence in England and Wales. It is created bsection 2(1)of the Public Order Act 1986. Sections 2(1) to (4) of that Act provide:
:(1) Where 3 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violen ...
. At the time, riot was punishable by
life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...
.
The trials collapsed when the evidence given by the police was deemed "unreliable".
Gareth Peirce
Gareth Peirce (born Jean Margaret Webb; March 1940) is a British solicitor and human rights activist. She has worked on a number of high-profile cases involving allegations of human rights injustices. Her work with Gerry Conlon and the Guildf ...
, who acted as
solicitor
A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...
for some of the pickets, said that the charge of riot had been used "to make a public example of people, as a device to assist in breaking the strike", while
Michael Mansfield
Michael Mansfield (born 12 October 1941) is an English barrister and head of chambers at Nexus Chambers. He was recently described as "The king of human rights work" by The Legal 500 and as a Leading Silk in civil liberties and human rights ( ...
called it "the worst example of a mass frame-up in this country this century".
In June 1991, the SYP paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners for
assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in crim ...
,
wrongful arrest,
unlawful detention
False imprisonment or unlawful imprisonment occurs when a person intentionally restricts another person’s movement within any area without legal authority, justification, or the restrained person's permission. Actual physical restraint is ...
and
malicious prosecution
Malicious prosecution is a common law intentional tort. Like the tort of abuse of process, its elements include (1) intentionally (and maliciously) instituting and pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal ...
.
Following the 2016 inquest verdict into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, previously censored documents suggesting links between the actions of senior SYP officers at both incidents were published. This led to renewed calls for a public inquiry
A tribunal of inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body. In many common law countries, such as the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Australia and Canada, such a public inquiry differs from a royal ...
to be held into the actions of the police at Orgreave.
In October 2016, in an Oral Answer to a Question in the House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
, a written ministerial statement to the House of Commons and Lords, and in a letter to the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC), Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
Amber Rudd
Amber Augusta Rudd (born 1 August 1963) is a British former politician who served as Home Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2018 to 2019. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Hastings and Rye, fi ...
announced there would be no statutory inquiry or independent review. In 2016, Alan Billings, the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner
The South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner is the police and crime commissioner of the South Yorkshire Police in South Yorkshire. The post was created on 22 November 2012, following an election held on 15 November 2012, and replaced the S ...
, admitted that the SYP had been "dangerously close to being used as an instrument of state".
Despite the police evidence subsequently being deemed unreliable in court, there still exists a body of opinion that the police at Orgreave "were upholding the law in the face of intimidation from thousands of strikers".
Background
Transport of coal and coke
The Orgreave Coking Works, where coal was turned into coke for use in steel production, was regarded by National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the UK miners' strike (1984–85), a major event in the history of ...
as crucial. Early in the strike, British Steel plants had been receiving "dispensations", picket-permitted movements of coal to prevent damage to their furnaces. However, it was found that more than the permitted amount of coal had been delivered, so action was taken.
In the early days of the 1984–85 strike, the NUM made a decision to picket the integrated steel complexes. Scargill invoked the notion of the old ''Triple Alliance'' whereby the unions in coal, steel and rail were bound to support one another, and asked steelworkers not to handle deliveries of coal. Bill Sirs of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) was a British trade union for metal-workers and allied groups, being the largest union in these fields. It was formed on 1 January 1917 as a merger of existing steel-workers' unions and it is now pa ...
(ISTC) rejected such calls on the grounds that industrial action by steelworkers at the integrated complexes could incapacitate the rolling mills and billet forges, and cause job losses. Sirs stated, in defiance of Scargill, that his members would continue to handle any fuel that presented itself.
There was also some opposition within the NUM to the picketing of the steel plants, as closures in the steel industry could reduce demand for coal and lead to job losses in the coal industry. Mick McGahey, the deputy leader of the NUM, was particularly concerned about the picketing of the Ravenscraig steelworks
The Ravenscraig steelworks, operated by Colvilles and from 1967 by British Steel Corporation, consisted of an integrated iron and steel works and a hot strip steel mill. They were located in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Motherwell ...
in Scotland, which he had campaigned to keep open, and negotiated agreements to maintain supplies of coal to the plant.
Picketing was largely unsuccessful at the plants of Ravenscraig, Llanwern
Llanwern is a community in the eastern part of the City of Newport, South East Wales. Llanwern is bounded by the M4 and Langstone to the north, Ringland, Lliswerry and the River Usk to the west, the River Severn to the south and the city bo ...
and Port Talbot
Port Talbot (, ) is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, situated on the east side of Swansea Bay, approximately from Swansea. The Port Talbot Steelworks covers a large area of land which dominates the south ...
, which were all close to deep-water ports and had a range of methods of receiving coal supplies. The plant at Scunthorpe
Scunthorpe () is an industrial town and unparished area in the unitary authority of North Lincolnshire in Lincolnshire, England of which it is the main administrative centre. Scunthorpe had an estimated total population of 82,334 in 2016. A pre ...
was inland and thus more vulnerable to picketing. The cokeworks at Orgreave became a target of the NUM pickets in an attempt to deny supplies of coal and coke to Scunthorpe.
An agreement between the NUM and ISTC over deliveries of 15,700 tonnes of coal per week to Scunthorpe broke down after an explosion in the Queen Mary blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric ...
at the plant on 21 May 1984. It took two hours to douse the flames and a further eight hours to stop the liquid iron bursting through the brickwork. This was considered a result of the poor quality of coal supplies. Attempts by the ISTC to persuade the NUM to deliver more coal did not bring immediate results, with the divisional official Roy Bishop writing on both the physical dangers to the workers by the Queen Mary and the possibility of irreversible damage to the furnace. As the NUM did not respond immediately, British Steel decided to act quickly to find alternative supplies. The company ordered a large consignment of coal from Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
to be delivered to Flixborough
Flixborough is a village and civil parish in North Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,664. It is situated near the River Trent, approximately north-west from Scunthorpe. The village is noted for ...
, Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...
, and spoke to every haulage company it had ever used to arrange for non-unionised hauliers to transport the coal. In addition, an order was made for 5,000 tonnes of top-quality coke to be delivered from Orgreave to Scunthorpe.
A sympathetic steelworker informed the Barnsley NUM of the plans on 22 May. Although there had been some picketing at Orgreave since the start of the strike, 23 May is generally considered the beginning of the major struggle between NUM pickets and the police to stop deliveries of coke from the plant. 18 June, which is often known as ''the Battle of Orgreave'', is generally considered the end of this period.
Changes in policing tactics
Mass picketing had proved successful at the Battle of Saltley Gate
The Battle of Saltley Gate was the mass picketing of a fuel storage depot in Birmingham, England, in February 1972 during a national miners' strike. When the strike began on 9 January 1972, it was generally considered that the miners "could not ...
in Saltley
Saltley is an inner-city area of Birmingham, east of the city centre. The area is part of the Washwood Heath ward, and was previously part of the Nechells ward. It is part of the Ladywood constituency in the city.
History
Saltley was originally ...
, Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, during the 1972 miners' strike. At Saltley Coke Works, 30,000 pickets and supporters led by Scargill had faced 800 police officers, and on 10 February 1972 Sir Derrick Capper
Sir William Derrick Capper (3 January 1912 – 21 March 1977) was an English police officer and the first Chief Constable of West Midlands Police.
Early life and education
Derrick Capper (as he preferred to continue being known after knighth ...
, the chief constable of Birmingham City Police
Birmingham City Police was the police service responsible for general policing in the city of Birmingham from 1839 to 1974. The force was established by a special Act of Parliament in 1839, and was amalgamated as of 1 April 1974 with the West M ...
, ordered the coking plant to close its gates "in the interests of public safety". Closure of the Saltley works secured victory for the NUM and nine days later the Conservative government of Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conserv ...
agreed to meet the union's demands.
As a direct result of Saltley, the Association of Chief Police Officers
The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ACPO) was a not-for-profit private limited company that for many years led the development of policing practices in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Established ...
(ACPO) established the National Reporting Centre (NRC) which would be "operationalised in times of industrial or political crisis o provide
O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...
a coordinated national response to demands on policing".[ The NRC assumed the power – "endorsed by the ]Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
" – to deploy police officers from any force in the country to areas of "high tension" and "across force boundaries without the knowledge or consent of local police authorities".[ Speaking in October 1984, John Alderson, the former deputy chief constable of ]Dorset Police
Dorset Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Dorset in the south-west of England, which includes the largely rural area covered by Dorset Council, and the urban conurbation of Bournemouth, Christchurch a ...
, criticised the NRC as a "''de facto'' national police".[ In addition, events in the early 1980s, such as the national steel strike of 1980 and the riots in inner-city areas such as ]Brixton
Brixton is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th ce ...
and Toxteth
Toxteth is an inner-city area of Liverpool in the historic county of Lancashire and the ceremonial county of Merseyside.
Toxteth is located to the south of Liverpool city centre, bordered by Aigburth, Canning, Dingle, and Edge Hill.
The area w ...
, had led police forces to train officers to deal with mass protests differently. For example, officers during the 1981 riots had been left using dustbin lids to protect themselves from missiles, whereas the police at Orgreave had all been equipped with riot shields.
Riot at Maltby and death of Joe Green
The Battle of Orgreave came amidst events that caused tensions to escalate in the Yorkshire coalfield. In Maltby, roughly from Orgreave, a large group of young mineworkers besieged the town's police station on Saturday, 9 June. There was a heavy police response that left the town cordoned off for several days and created local resentment.
On Friday, 15 June, an underground worker from Kellingley Colliery
Kellingley Colliery was a deep coal mine in North Yorkshire, England, east of Ferrybridge power station. It was owned and operated by UK Coal.
The colliery closed on 18 December 2015, marking the end of deep-pit coal mining in Britain. The s ...
, Joe Green was killed while picketing. As Green was trying to dissuade lorries from delivering fuel to Ferrybridge
Ferrybridge is a village in West Yorkshire, England. Ferrybridge lies at a historically important crossing of the River Aire which borders the North Yorkshire village of Brotherton. It is linked to other communities by the A1, which follows t ...
"A" Power Station, he was fatally struck by a trailer.
This came after the death of David Jones in controversial circumstances at Ollerton
Ollerton is a town in the Newark and Sherwood District, Nottinghamshire, England, on the edge of Sherwood Forest in the area known as the Dukeries. It forms part of the civil parish of Ollerton and Boughton. OS Explorer Map 270: Sherwood Forest: ...
on 15 March 1984, and also a similar incident in the 1972 strike in which picketer Freddie Matthews was killed by a lorry that mounted the pavement to cross a picket line. Speaking at a well-attended rally in nearby Wakefield
Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...
on Sunday 17 June, Scargill made an impassioned plea to close Orgreave with mass picketing.
Events
The NUM deployed 5,000 pickets from across the UK, who planned to use sheer numbers ("mass picketing") to prevent access to Orgreave by strike-breaking lorries that collected coke for use at Scunthorpe. The South Yorkshire Police
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) is the territorial police force responsible for policing South Yorkshire in England.
The force is led by Chief Constable Lauren Poultney. Oversight is conducted by Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings.
T ...
(SYP) were determined not to see a repeat of 1972's Battle of Saltley Gate – where 30,000 pickets had overwhelmed 800 police officers – and deployed around 6,000 officers from eighteen different forces at Orgreave, equipped with riot gear and supported by police dogs and 42 mounted police officers.
Robert East ''et al'', writing in the ''Journal of Law and Society
The ''Journal of Law and Society'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed law journal which publishes papers in the field of the sociology of law. It was established in 1974 as the ''British Journal of Law and Society'', obtaining its current name in 1982. ...
'' in 1985, suggested that rather than maintaining order and upholding the law, "the police intended that Orgreave would be a 'battle' where, as a result of their preparation and organisation, they would 'defeat' the pickets".[ ]Michael Mansfield
Michael Mansfield (born 12 October 1941) is an English barrister and head of chambers at Nexus Chambers. He was recently described as "The king of human rights work" by The Legal 500 and as a Leading Silk in civil liberties and human rights ( ...
said: "They wanted to teach the miners a lesson – a ''big'' lesson, such that they wouldn't come out in force again." Civil liberties pressure group Liberty
Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom.
In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...
has said: "There ''was'' a riot. But it was a police riot
A police riot is a riot carried out by the police; more specifically, it is a riot that police are responsible for instigating, escalating or sustaining as a violent confrontation. Police riots are often characterized by widespread police bruta ...
."
Having corralled the pickets into a field overlooking the coke works, the SYP positioned officers equipped with long riot shields at the bottom of the field and mounted police and dogs to either side. A road along one side of the field allowed the mounted police to deploy rapidly, and a railway cutting
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the ...
at the top of the field made retreat by the pickets difficult and dangerous.[ When the pickets surged forward at the arrival of the first convoy of lorries, SYP Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Clement ordered a mounted charge against them. It was "a serious overreaction" and the miners responded by throwing stones and other missiles at the police lines.][ Clement ordered two further mounted advances, and the third advance was supported by "short shield" snatch squads who followed the mounted police, "delivering baton beatings to the unarmed miners".][ There followed a lull of several hours, during which many pickets left the scene. The coking plant had closed for the day and no more lorries were due to arrive. Those pickets that remained in the field were sunbathing or playing football and posed no threat to the police or the plant. By now "massively outnumbering" the pickets, the police advanced again and launched another mounted charge. Officers pursued the pickets out of the field and into Orgreave village, where Clement ordered a "mounted police ]canter
The canter and gallop are variations on the fastest gait that can be performed by a horse or other equine. The canter is a controlled three-beat gait, while the gallop is a faster, four-beat variation of the same gait. It is a natural gait pos ...
" which Hunt describes as an "out-of-control police force hargingpickets and onlookers alike on terraced, British streets".[
]
Trials
Official reports state that during the confrontation 93 arrests were made, with 51 pickets and 72 policemen injured. 95 pickets were charged with riot, unlawful assembly Unlawful assembly is a legal term to describe a group of people with the mutual intent of deliberate disturbance of the peace. If the group is about to start an act of disturbance, it is termed a rout; if the disturbance is commenced, it is then ter ...
and similar offences after the battle. A number of these men were put on trial in 1985, but the trials collapsed, all charges were dropped and a number of lawsuits were brought against the SYP for assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in crim ...
, unlawful arrest
False arrest, Unlawful arrest or Wrongful arrest is a common law tort, where a plaintiff alleges they were held in custody without probable cause, or without an order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. Although it is possible to sue ...
and malicious prosecution
Malicious prosecution is a common law intentional tort. Like the tort of abuse of process, its elements include (1) intentionally (and maliciously) instituting and pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal ...
. The SYP later agreed to pay £425,000 compensation and £100,000 in legal costs to 39 pickets in an out of court settlement
In law, a settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. A collective settlement is a settlement of multiple similar legal cases. The term also has other meanings in t ...
.[ However, no officer was disciplined for misconduct.
Writing for '']The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' in 1985, Gareth Peirce
Gareth Peirce (born Jean Margaret Webb; March 1940) is a British solicitor and human rights activist. She has worked on a number of high-profile cases involving allegations of human rights injustices. Her work with Gerry Conlon and the Guildf ...
said that the events at Orgreave "revealed that in this country we now have a standing army available to be deployed against gatherings of civilians whose congregation is disliked by senior police officers. It is answerable to no one; it is trained in tactics which have been released to no one, but which include the deliberate maiming and injuring of innocent persons to disperse them, in complete violation of the law."
Calls for official inquiry
Mansfield described the evidence given by the SYP as "the biggest frame-up
__NOTOC__
In the United States criminal law, a frame-up (frameup) or setup is the act of framing someone, that is, providing false evidence or false testimony in order to falsely prove someone guilty of a crime. While incriminating those who a ...
ever". He said that the force had a culture of fabricating evidence which was not corrected by the time of the Hillsborough disaster
The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the ...
. After the 2012 report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel
The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal Crowd collapses and crushes, human crush during a association football, football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-fina ...
, NUM leader Chris Kitchen called for the investigation into the force's practices to be widened to cover the Orgreave clashes. Also in 2012, the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) was formed to campaign for a public inquiry into the policing of the events of 18 June 1984, following the success of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. In October 2012, a BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...
regional news and current affairs programme, '' Inside Out'', broadcast a 30-minute film about the events at Orgreave.[ The programme reexamined the evidence that the SYP had deliberately attempted to co-ordinate arrest statements in order to charge the miners with riot.
Following the programme, the SYP referred itself to the ]Independent Police Complaints Commission
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was a non-departmental public body in England and Wales responsible for overseeing the system for handling complaints made against police forces in England and Wales.
On 8 January 2018, th ...
(IPCC).
In June 2015, the IPCC announced that it would not launch a formal investigation into the events at Orgreave because too much time had passed. A Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
MP, Helen Jones
Helen Mary Jones (born 24 December 1954) is a British Labour politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Warrington North from 1997 to 2019.
Jones has served as Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government and Shadow Home Of ...
, responded in the House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
by expressing her "deep concern", saying that the decision "calls into question whether the IPCC is fit for purpose".
Labour MS Mick Antoniw
Mick Antoniw ( uk, Мік Антонів; born 1 September 1954) is a Welsh Labour and Co-operative politician, serving as Counsel General for Wales since 2021, and previously from 2016 to 2017. He has been the Member of the Senedd (MS) for Pon ...
, who represented several Welsh miners charged with offences at Orgreave, said the miners were "surrounded on all sides by police horses and police dogs and then savagely attacked by charge after charge of baton-wielding police officers on horseback. Despite public calls at that time for an investigation, no inquiry ever took place. The tragedy of this failure is that not only have those miners who were arrested been denied the justice and vindication that would come from such an inquiry it meant that an early opportunity to investigate the culture and operation of the South Yorkshire Police never took place."
In September 2016, Mike Freeman, a retired detective superintendent with Greater Manchester Police
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester in North West England.
, Greater Manchester Police employed 6,866 police officers, 3,524 memb ...
who had been a sergeant at Orgreave, told how the SYP pre-arranged a system whereby officers who made arrests would not – contrary to established police procedure – be responsible for their prisoners and write out statements detailing the arrest, but instead hand over prisoners at a reception point, return to the picket line, and at the end of the operation simply sign statements which had been pre-prepared by other officers not involved in the arrest. Freeman said that he had "never encountered it before or since" and "I knew in my own mind that was wrong, and I can clearly remember saying to colleagues that I was with that day, 'I will not be making an arrest on that operation', and I didn't." Another officer said that he and colleagues at Orgreave had been instructed by a superior officer not to write anything in their pocketbooks, a practice controversially repeated by the SYP at Hillsborough in 1989. It was a disciplinary offence not to write in their pocketbooks, which were considered "contemporaneous notes" and "very difficult to amend without it being obvious, and therefore persuasive, credible evidence in a courtroom".
In October 2016, a former Merseyside Police
Merseyside Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing Merseyside in North West England. The service area is 647 square kilometres with a population of around 1.5 million. As of September 2017 the service has 3,484 police of ...
officer who was present at Orgreave told BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
that at a briefing before the confrontation senior SYP officers were "anticipating trouble and in some ways relishing it and looking forward to it". He said that the police support units had been given "a licence to do what we wanted" and were ordered to charge "a largely peaceful crowd". Of the violence that followed, he said: "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was just seeing police officers attack people. These were people on the ground and even if they weren't doing anything – just walking away – police officers had their batons and they were just hitting people." A number of police officers had removed the identification numbers on their uniforms, as illustrated in an iconic photograph taken on the day by Martin Jenkinson.
The campaign for an inquiry gained more coverage following revelations about
in the SYP during the Hillsborough disaster.
became the first council in the UK to fly the flag of the OTJC in June 2016, whilst other councils in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire were considering the same action.
Footage of the confrontation was filmed by a crew from the BBC. When this appeared on that evening's news bulletins, it was edited and broadcast out of chronological sequence, showing pickets throwing stones at the police and the police subsequently carrying out a mounted charge.