You shared a ride down with Eric, in his baby-poo brown Cortina. It had a peeling racing stripe under the swage line and a second stripe, of rust, beneath that. It was still Eric’s pride and joy though.
“Remember that advert on Telly,” Eric said, “People will always need coal. Couldn’t get enough workers a couple of years back. Had to start recruiting on TV. Now they want to close down twenty pits, and that’s just the start of it”.
“Made mining look like a close second choice to being a movie star and all,” Allison said.
Everyone used Allison’s surname, because it was canny funny – calling him a girl’s name – given how he looked rough enough to bite the nose off a bulldog.
“Miners with glamour models draped all over them. Miners on sun-loungers. Miners off skiing and scuba diving,” Allison’s voice was muffled, because he was covered with a tartan blanket.
He was lying, hid as best as was possible, in the rear foot well. Another striker was in the boot, to keep the back seats unoccupied. You got shotgun because you looked least like a coal miner and you had the best banter.
Police had been setting up roadblocks for the past couple of months. Stopping any cars with miners in them, with working-age men in them, with men in them. The fewer folk visible, the more chance of getting waved through.
Nottinghamshire was the worst. Police riddled it like syphilis. Nottinghamshire produced a quarter of the nation’s coal and they’d voted against striking. Their coal seams were thick and easy accessed. They believed their jobs were safe. But they were persuadable, with solidarity; man by man; pit by pit. Because they were just miners at the finish. Just men at the finish.
Did the same jobs, had the same families and the same fears: like that Thatcher’s axe-man, Ian MacGregor, now in charge of the mines, had made the exact same promises to Sheffield’s steel workers: divided them one against another; told half of them their jobs were safe; then halved that half again afterwards; and again; death by a thousand cuts; and the steel workers all lost their jobs in the end.
The Nottingham lads had been gradually coming over. And the government knew it. So they swamped the Nottinghamshire borders with eight thousand police officers, called in from all over the country. Might as well have been East Germany, for all the ease of getting in to Nottinghamshire after. Behind an iron curtain, it was. Behind a thin blue line. Behind a thin blue line that was suddenly thick as a brick netty and stank like one and all.
They could arrest under obstructing a police officer, for not turning back. Pickets who persisted could get their cars smashed by police too. They could truncheon the lights and fine for driving an un-roadworthy vehicle. Slash the tires and leave a sticker on the wreck: You’ve met The Met. When did British law get suspended? Who exactly voted for that?
Truth was, the police had been given generous pay rises and tidy overtime, and new equipment, and crowd control training, and bolstered ranks. Government had left the coppers in no doubt as to which side their bread was buttered. Sometimes strikers would see police with no insignia or badge numbers, only visored helmets and dark boiler suits. Rumours abounded that these men were military, or military intelligence, or worse: ex-military: just deputised thugs. Even the normal bobbies had started marching like soldiers, marching in platoons, marching in squadrons, marching in armies.
Yet it was the miners who were called Arthur’s Army in the media. It was more than just a tabloid tag. It was part of the militarisation. Part of the othering of the miners. Miners were demonised in the papers. Red Tops told their readers that the miners were greedy, selfish, violent, the foes of the common man.
The government invented a number – a twisted, distorted figure, out of all relation with reality – of how much the mines were costing: one thousand three hundred million pounds a week. They repeated it, they plastered it, they put it on posters. Might have put it on buses, had they thought of it. The press parroted it – one thousand three hundred million pounds a week, think of where we could be spending that money – the number was reiterated until it stuck.
They retold a giant lie, a false figure, painted it everywhere, until it sunk into the minds of the public. Politicians knew the number was a lie. Press knew the number was a lie. But more than half the public bought it. The figure was a wildly over-blown estimate, composed of already sunk costs and the price of closing down the pits, whereas keeping them running required little subsidy at all. But more than half the public bought it.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly called the strikers “enemies”. Thatcher called them “extremists”. Thatcher called them the “enemies of democracy”. Thatcher said they were trying to “kill democracy for their own purposes”. Thatcher called them “the enemy within”, as if they were fifth columnists, terrorists. Not men exercising their legal right to strike, not people using the democratic power of protest, not even impediments to policy: the enemy…
And when a government names a group the enemy, they are green-lighting any action against them. The police were supposed to be impartial in Britain. The police were supposed to uphold the law, not prop up the Tories. But the police took the government at their word. The police took it that the miners were outlaws; in the old sense, the common law sense – hors-la-loi – those to whom normal rights no longer apply.
So Kent miners were arbitrarily banned from using the Dartford Tunnel, to stop them going North. Nottinghamshire became a foreign country, a hostile state. Freedom of movement was over, if you happened to be a miner. You could be arrested for trespass, on public footpaths and public highways. Freedom of movement was ended. Ended in your own bloody country.
But there were no roadblocks that day. On that beautiful June day, no one stopped that baby-poo brown Cortina on its way to Orgreave Coking Plant. In fact, there were signposts pointing the way.
Stranger still, you were directed into the Asda car park. The last time you’d picketed Orgreave, you’d had to come in on foot, over spoil heaps, through abandoned outbuildings and across a railway line, to avoid the police cordons. But that day, a smiling copper in a high vis jacket flagged Eric in to park in the supermarket, just at the top of the village. There were coaches there and all. Coaches of miners from as far away as South Wales and Scotland.
And the courtesy continued: you were all led down to a field next to the coking plant, in a pied piper trail, behind a jam-sandwich police car. All the men from sixty odd coaches and a massed hodgepodge of shared cars were escorted down the street that came from Asda. Past the terraced houses on Highfield Lane: red brick; white stone lintels; grey lace curtains, twitching at the spectacle; glass milk bottles outside, gold tops, spuggies pecking holes in them to get at the cream. A horned, orange space hopper lulled outside one house, a grinning round demon.
You were led on, over a narrow bridge; under it, the steep valley of a railway line cutting. You all arrived into what could be described as a meadow, or a containment zone, or a trap. Everything is a matter of perspective. In front of the picketers, between you and the coking plant, was a line of police ten deep and over a hundred wide. A thousand coppers in one solid phalanx. An entire Roman legion of them, and with full length Perspex shields making an impenetrable wall, like the Romans used to. The Romans were bastards and all.
Over in the field to your left were more police, with dogs. German shepherds, used for their wolfishness: something primal about the way their snarls tore the air; the way their lips curled back, their white fangs snapping as they barked, straining against quick release leashes. Their handlers were letting them bark, letting the miners know they were there.
In the field on the right were horses. Mounted police. Batons as long as a deputy’s yard stick, but not made for measuring, the batons were sprung, to wrap around when they hit, like a steel whip. The horses snorted. The horses pawed at the dirt with muscled forelegs. The horses cavorted with barely reined-in force.
And there were more horsemen behind the massed rank of riot police. And there were more Alsatian handlers at the bottom of the railway cutting and all. The miners were completely surrounded. The only way out was the way you’d been led in: across the bridge: a solitary, single-file escape route, for all these gathered men.
You were no military tactician, but you’d watched Zulu and Spartacus at the pictures and you’d read a little Shakespeare at school. And the scene reminded you of the buffalo horns pincer movement, used by the Zulu. The coppers looked like the legionaries and cavalry used against the rebellious slaves in Spartacus. The German Shepherds sounded like they yearned for someone to give the order: cry ‘havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war.
Most of the miners seemed entirely unconcerned. Some of the Scots had probably never felt the sun as hot as it was that day. None of you had experienced so much time under it. For once, you all looked healthy. The strike was the longest you’d had in the sunshine since you were bairns. Graft marks, scars and tattoos were gradually melding into suntans. Many were shirtless that day. There was a feel of holiday. A field, not of battle, but of play.
Normally it was miners in body-warmers, miners in parkas. Miners in donkey jackets, commando caps, bobble hats. Miners in double denim. Miners in thick rimmed National Health spectacles. Miners in two stripe jogging bottoms. Miners in army surplus shirts, splattered with stickers and badges. Miners in flat caps and nylon leisure wear. Miners with Magnum P.I. moustaches and Kevin Keegan hair.
But that day, the one hundredth day of the strike, you were almost all in shorts and T-shirts, or else stripped to string vests and bare chests. There were some curious forms abroad. Men who worked on their knees, men who worked lying down, built muscles in improbable places. Some ended up bulbous in odd ways. There were muscles on display that wouldn’t even be found on Daley Thompson, for all the varied events in decathlon.
Police were dressed for battle. Black tunics, thick coveralls. Bobbies in big helmets to make them look taller, halfway to busbies. Halfway to army. Half of them were army, some said. When they put their chinstraps on you knew it was trouble. They all had their chinstraps on that day. And steel-capped boots, shin pads, cricket boxes, reinforced gloves, arm and body protection. And that was just the normal peelers. Riot squads were in armour, riots squads were helmed and visored. Long shields and short shields, repel and attack. Police were hot, police were sweaty, police were angry.
The first act of the day was invariably the same. The push always came as the lorries arrived. Exempted from speed restrictions; no longer weighed for overload. They drove in like they were fleeing the police, not being escorted by them. Company names over-painted. Windows grilled. Nearby roads blocked to normal traffic. Sirens screeching. A miner named Joe Green had just been killed – picketing at Ferrybridge power station – hit by a trailer.
So the lorries arrived and the miners rose. Rose from their sarnies and card games and flasks of tea. They started their habitual chants. The miners united, will never be defeated. Here we go here we go here we go. They came down the field, towards the shield line, arms swinging with the singing, like they were dancing to Madness.
It had been the same every day since May: the miners pushed at the police line, the police kept them back, the lorries got through. And so, the usual ritual began again that eighteenth of June: miners started down the field, to push against the police lines, like they had every day for weeks. Like they always did: miners would push at the police line; police would shout hold the line; the line would hold; coking lorries would get in; everyone would resume as they were – chatting in the sunshine or earning overtime – picketing and policing both on pause, until the next lot of lorries.
But it was the hundredth day of the strike and someone had decided that one hundred days was long enough. As the miners came towards them, the phalanx of riot officers – a dark army, summoned in such numbers that the nation might never see the like again – began beating on their shields. Bashing truncheon butts on Perspex. It sounded like thunder. The noise ripped right through you: it was like that scene from Zulu, just before the massacre.
The miners coming down the field slowed. There were kids among you and all. Old men there and all. Women there and all. Come to witness. Come to experience. Come to see. A medieval battle on a beautiful day. Something rich and strange.
Without warning police horses came at the canter. Rapidly police horses moved into charge. It felt like earthquake. Felt like the ground was shaking. You could smell them, you could feel them coming, the world changed, with charging wrath. You felt the slice of air as a mounted copper tried to smash you with a swung baton. You dropped from instinct. Eric dropped from a blow to the back of his head. Blood streamed into his mullet. Hooves were all around. You coiled foetal. You feared for your life. Miners wet themselves. Big men, hard men, had never felt a horror like that of a horse charging at them. You suddenly knew something of the spit and shiver and piss and terror of ancient peasants facing armed cavalry. Herdsmen against Mongol hordes.
The riders wheeled and rode back towards their own lines. Back through the crowd of pickets. Back through the bewildered and the injured. The police clapped and banged the riders home. Miners picked themselves up. Miners tried to lift maimed colleagues. Miners bunched tee-shirts onto wounds. You lay frozen, still curled, in shock, while Allison and another man helped Eric.
The second time the horses charged, panic broke out. You all knew what was coming now. The young started running. The old tried their best to get out the way. Wide eyed horses, staring through Perspex blinkers, reared and hoofed. Riders wielded night sticks, from atop one-ton animals, nineteen hands high. Bags of buns and pork pies and pop from Asda, scattered on the ground, trampled into the mud, flecked with blood.
This time, short shield snatch squads ran in behind the horses. Truncheoning into the carnage. Arresting at random. Arresting the floored and the broken. Wearing black boiler suits, no epaulets, no numbers, no way of identifying who had dealt violence, should a photographer catch them. Pairs of them, dragging men back to behind the long shield phalanx. Where blue Leyland police vans, boxy like Tonka toys, sat waiting, incongruous.
Long shields opened the line to let arresting snatch squads back through. But only just enough to let them through. Arrested pickets were bounced off the shields. Arrested pickets ran a gauntlet of punches and truncheons, fists and sticks, before being slammed off vans and slung in.
You saw a young lad, with a broken leg, being frogmarched across the field. Trying to hop. Crying in pain. You saw plenty of heads smashed open. Always at the back, always running away. Trying to get to safety. You didn’t see a single picket with a wound to the front of his head.
But some miners did stand their ground then. After the second charge, miners started to throw stones, bottles, anything they could find, at the police lines. Miners chucked stuff at that point, to try and stop the charges. But the charges came first.
And more charges came. Coppers came with short shields, half shields, round shields. Coppers came with batons. Coppers came hot and sweaty and angry.
Miners lobbed stones. Beat a retreat. Got beaten in retreat. Pounded to the ground. Truncheoned to the ground. Truncheoned on the ground.
Miners were chased up the field. Men poured down the railway embankment. Cheese rolling down the steep hill. Tomahawking to the bottom. War painted with blood. Men clutching their heads. Men clutching their stomachs. Men clutching their knees. Men were sobbing. Men were vomiting.
Dog handlers were waiting. Dogs barking. Dogs snarling. Dogs biting. Miners fled along the railway lines. More afraid of the canines than the trains.
But most of you ran back across that narrow bridge, into the village.
The village was laid in crescents. Miner’s houses were in the crescents. Police wanted to cut the men off from the crescents, from shelter. Police chased in vehicles. Sirens screamed. Police poured out of vans. Pickets ran through gardens. Pickets ran through private dwellings. Pickets were terrified.
Police chased through gardens. Police chased through private dwellings. Pickets were beaten under bay windows. Blood on the backyards. Blood on the patios. Men with split heads, smothered in blood, marched up the street. Bundled into vans. Marched publicly, pour encourager les autres. Bounced off lampposts, bounced off bins. Miners hid in garden sheds. Miners hid in bedrooms and hedges.
Iron horseshoes clattered on the tarmac streets. Horses charged between parked cars. Miners were sick from the fear. From the running. From stitches. From the heat. Miners vomited.
Short shields came after the horses. Chasing miners down sloping streets, swinging as they came, running over the fallen, leaving it to the bobbies behind to hand out a proper beating.
You realised, in the midst of witnessing that rout, that being assaulted by the police is the position of ultimate helplessness and hopeless: because to fight back will only make it worse; yet who can come to rescue you; who can protect you, when you’re being beaten-up by the protectors?
It emerged from miners arrested, that the South Yorkshire Serious Crime Squad were already on hand, behind the lines. A place like Orgreave was normally nothing to do with them, should be nothing to do with them. Yet there they were, waiting, ready. Ready to dictate statements to other officers; officers who should have been perfectly capable of describing events themselves.
In the charging rooms, plain clothes coppers from South Yorkshire Police fabricated statements, created the scene, told tales, grim tales, dark fairy tales, stories that allowed for a scene of riot.
South Yorkshire Police claimed there’d been a violent attack on them, that they had no choice but to send in the cavalry to regain control.
South Yorkshire Police were fond of doctoring statements. Steering the course of justice. Collusion. Statements didn’t match logbooks. Statements didn’t match photos. Statements didn’t match videos. Statements were a stitch-up.
South Yorkshire police said that a stream of missiles came first, before the cavalry charges. The miners knew it was the other way around. But the BBC showed it the same as the police said, come the ten o’clock news, that night of the eighteenth of June. The BBC switched the sequence. The BBC must have buckled under government pressure. The BBC cut the film and changed reality. The BBC knowingly altered the truth of events.
And you knew the miners were screwed then. You expected it from the printed press. From the Murdochs and the Red Tops. From all of the tatty tabloids, with their lies and bile and bias. But the BBC…
One police officer nursing a cut ear was shown on the night-time news. Sitting cosy in an ambulance with a cut ear. With miners bloody as abattoir floors. Miners dripping on the streets, on the fields. Miners curled motionless being cudgelled. You had seen a girl get batonned in the face by a mounted man. All of it was filmed. All of it was photographed. Yet they showed one policeman nursing a cut ear. You smashed your teacup off the scullery wall.
You had seen it. You had witnessed it: police caught on camera, beating unarmed people on the ground. Yet not one officer was prosecuted, no one was charged. No copper was even disciplined. Not in Chile, not in El Salvador, not in South Africa. Not even in Northern Ireland. In Yorkshire. In England. Because miners were the enemy within. Miners were the enemies of democracy. Miners were the enemies of the people.
This faction account – reimagined for Yorkshire Bylines and the 40th anniversary of Orgreave – is substantially drawn from Jonathan Trigell’s latest novel Under Country.
