Daniel Gordon explores the continuing injustice of Orgreave, the lack of scrutiny in the policing, government decisions, and the starvation tactics that followed in Thatcher’s resolve to end the 80s miners’ strike and many of the communities who dared challenge her power. Strike: An Uncivil War is now streaming on Netflix.
On the 18th of June, 1984, the Orgreave coking plant near Rotherham became a scene of violence, intimidation and threat as 6000 police officers, including mounted police from South Yorkshire and beyond, unleashed the full powers of the British state on striking miners, leading to over 100 injuries, 95 arrests and 71 charges of rioting. However, the miners were not there to riot; they were simply there to picket lorry drivers supplying coke to the steel industry during an industrial dispute and strike against coal mine closures and working conditions that had rumbled throughout the 1970s.
Margaret Thatcher’s tactics and her willingness to use force were evident from early on in her government’s reign, and her ideology was clearly spelt out in a speech in 1987, “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society, and who is society? There is no such thing!”.
What happened at Orgreave on that sunny and warm June day forty years ago is the subject of director Daniel Gordon’s (Hillsborough) urgent and timely documentary, Strike: An Uncivil War, which premiered at Sheffield DocFest in June.
It is the story of a government cover-up that has spanned forty years, the power of propaganda and the injustice endorsed by Police chiefs and cabinet members. Like her later speech on society in 1987, Strike: An Uncivil War demonstrates the power Thatcher wielded in her government’s ideological crusade to change Britain forever, a crusade that was to be won no matter the public resistance or the pain inflicted. At Orgreave, a new style of national policing was born, one built on power, dominance and control. It was the style of policing the British had long used across the empire, and in Rotherham, it had come home.
The news footage that day showed miners throwing stones and missiles at the police as mounted officers charged into them; it built a picture of miners using violence against police and officers who simply responded. But in truth, it was the police who brutally charged the striking crowds without provocation, and it was the police who had allowed the miners to assemble, then penned them in one place, ready for a confrontation that was planned as a show of state strength with the full knowledge and endorsement of Thatcher’s government.
Orgreave would be a lesson in what happens if you challenge the government, which would be broadcast far and wide and twisted to achieve its goal. Thatcher stated that the events demonstrated mob rule by the miners and used Orgreave to bolster her power, when in reality, the only mob that day was the government and the explicit orders they gave.
Daniel Gordon explores the continuing injustice of Orgreave, the lack of scrutiny in the policing, government decisions, and the starvation tactics that followed in Thatcher’s resolve to end the 80s miners’ strike and many of the communities who dared challenge her power. It is a story of willful community destruction, un-restrained power, imperialism, and injustice that is tough, forthright and urgent, as it uncovers and explores the human stories of those at Orgreave and the ideological beliefs and actions of a Prime Minister who genuinely believed “there was no such thing as society.”
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