1972
February
The mass picket of the Orgreave coke works in 1984 has its origins in what has become known as the battle of Saltley Gate. It involved a mass picket of a Birmingham fuel depot and has been called the British miners’ Agincourt. The picket was initially 400 miners from Yorkshire, led by a 34-year-old firebrand called Arthur Scargill, but was swelled by at least 15,000 engineering workers from surrounding factories.
The picket was successful and helped bring Edward Heath’s government to its knees. Heath, subsequently forced to introduce a three-day week, lost the election in 1974 while Scargill was propelled to national fame.
1984
7pm
17 June
A meeting is held at Silverwood Miners Welfare, in Rotherham.
Scargill, now president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), addresses miners about the following day’s picket. He says 2,000 miners from South Yorkshire collieries would be at Orgreave, an enormous plant outside Rotherham where coal was processed into coke to be used in British Steel’s vast factories, 40 miles east in Scunthorpe.
That evening, miners from further afield arrive, staying overnight in places such as the Northern College, in Barnsley. Others sleep on floors.
4am
18 June
About 400 pickets gather near the plant.
6am
It is shaping up to be a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky.
It was “scorching” even at that time, recalled one picket. “All the Scottish boys had their tops off, it was that warm,” he said.
7am
A union official is being filmed. “They tell me it’s the biggie,” he says, as men cheerfully stream behind him. Birds are singing. Spirits are high. The official continues: “It’s about seven o’clock. A few of us are here already. I’m told there’s going to be thousands. Let’s have a look, see what happens.”
Police seem to be directing the miners to a field. Some play football. Nearby villagers bring out trays of orange juice and iced water.
But why were they being guided by police? “I’d never seen this before,” recalled one. “Normally they’d stop you on the motorway and make you walk, six or seven miles.”
When miners get over a railway bridge and on to a hill overlooking the plant they see some of what is to come. Police officers are lined up in staggering numbers in front of the plant.
Bill Frostwick, a miner from Durham, recalled: “They were so well organised, man, it was a trap. And we fell for it, went straight in.”
The number of police, some on horseback, some with dogs, is remarkable. But so too is the number of miners, in jeans, trainers, T-shirts and no shirts, looking down at a motionless thick black wall of police, sometimes 10-deep.
8am
There are an estimated 8,000 pickets facing 6,000 officers. A unit of riot police carrying long shields is ordered to move in front of the lines of uniformed police guarding the coking plant.
Tensions are rising. “It was something out of Gladiator or some Roman film,” said one. “It was just beyond belief.”
8.10am
Empty wagons start arriving to pick up coke from the plant. Miners push towards the police line and police push back. Pickets who were there recall struggling to keep their feet on the ground or even breathe.
8.12am
The police line opens and officers on horses, carrying staves twice as long as truncheons, advance on the miners. Hundreds of miners can be seen running, trying to get out of the way before the police ride their horses back and the ranks close up.
Stones are being thrown towards the police. There is footage of police in uniform trying to avoid missiles.
8.28am
There is a second horse charge. As they return, police applaud and bang their batons on their shields.
8.36am
A third charge. This time they are accompanied by snatch squads of police with batons and short shields, the first time they have been used on the UK mainland.
A senior officer can be heard on film shouting into a megaphone: “Bodies not heads!”
Lesley Boulton, the subject of what has become one of the most famous photographs taken on the day, recalled: “There were policemen on foot with short shields, laying about people with truncheons. I was numb with shock. This was violence far in excess of anything I’d ever witnessed.”
Miners are being dragged out of the crowd and pulled to the ground. A TV news crew captures footage of Russell Broomhead being repeatedly bludgeoned over the head with a truncheon.
9.25am
About 2,000 miners are sent to another entrance to Orgreave where there is another large field.
10.15am
The gates open and aabout 30 coke-laden lorries begin to drive out. Pickets begin moving forward to try to stop the lorries. Arrests, along with more allegations of brutality, are made. The lorries get through.
11am
The police launch new attempts to clear the area of pickets. There are more horse charges and more snatch squads of officers with short batons. Miners can be seen running as fast as they can to get out of the field.
11.43am
Scargill sits dazed and injured after being hit, he says, by a police shield. “All I know is that these bastards rushed in and this guy hit me on the back of my head with a shield and I was out.” The police deny that Scargill was hit by a shield.
1.08pm
The trouble subsides.
Evening
In two late-night sittings of Rotherham magistrates court, scores of arrested arrested miners are charged with criminal offences and given bail.
19 June
The newspaper headlines and stories focus on Scargill being treated for minor injuries.
“Scargill in hospital after bloody battle of Orgreave,” is the headline on the lead story in the Times. “Blackest day for pit strike violence,” is the headline in the Guardian, which reports that the battle lasted for 10 hours.
The Labour MP Tony Benn said the scenes amounted “in some cases to almost civil war proportions”, the Guardian reports.
• Sources include the documentary film Strike: An Uncivil War, on Netflix, and Robert Gildea’s book, Backbone of the Nation.
