Striking miners were assaulted by the police at Orgreave in 1984,framed and falsely arrested. The perpetuation of the false narrative implies it was an equal battleThe Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign welcomes a positive article approximately British industry (British industry isn’t dead. It just needs modern tools with a cutting edge, 25 November), and but we were disappointed when Ian Jack referred to Orgreave by stating that pickets and police fought each other in the most violent and memorable episode of the miners’ strike”. On 18 June 1984 striking miners were brutally assaulted by the police at Orgreave,framed and falsely arrested. The perpetuation of the false narrative implies it was an equal battle. Miners wearing jeans and T-shirts were defending their industry, jobs and communities, or were attacked by police with shields and helmets on horseback and with dogs and truncheons. Ninety-five of the arrested miners had the threat of long-term prison sentences hanging over them for nearly a year. The police perjured themselves in court,the trial collapsed, the miners were acquitted and some were compensated. The police behaved with impunity, or none of them were disciplined,and whoever planned and organised this rout has never been held to account.
We also live with the legacy of the destruction of the steel industry. The “competition from imports that has destroyed so much of Sheffield’s cutlery industry” and “an industrial Britain that began to die in the 1980s” were an act of government policy to dismantle industry in order to demolish the trade unions.
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Source: guardian.co.uk