The Valley (53 page)

55 What I Did in the War, Daddy

Orgreave Coking Works, South Yorkshire, and Hinckley, Leicestershire, June–July 1984

One morning in late April, Gary Hollingworth is on a picket line at Wistow pit sharing sandwiches and coffee handed out by policemen from Whitby when six police vans pull up, discharging dozens of fresh, younger policemen who stand looking about them, grinning and rolling their necks against their shoulders. They have southern accents and their uniforms are unusual, with white shirts rather than the familiar blue. The miners will soon come to recognise the uniform as that of the Metropolitan Police.

One of them, a tall, healthy-looking auburn-whiskered man in his late twenties, walks up to the pickets. He is chewing gum and sticking out his chest like the cocky villain in a Western. ‘So this is it, is it?’ He scans the lines of men, inspecting them. ‘Here they are.
The fucking Yorkshire miners
.’

The pickets look at one another. The young policeman says, ‘What’s it going to be then, lads? We gonna have a ruck or what?’

‘What you on about?’ says one of the pickets.

‘What-
yooo-on-abaht
,’ mimics the policeman.

There follows more bad-tempered, foul-mouthed banter. A Whitby officer tells one of the Met men to calm down. The Met man steps up to him so their faces are only a foot apart. ‘We deal with worse shit than this in London, son,’ he says, and reels off an itemised list: fucking niggers, fucking queers, the fucking Greenham lezzers. ‘And I’ll tell you,’ he says. ‘Greenham was a shithole, but it was fucking paradise compared to this. If we have to live in this fucking shithole, we’re going to have a bit of fucking fun.’

‘Who do you think you’re talking to, pal?’ says the Whitby policeman.

‘You. And the rest of your fucking Mickey Mouse cops.’

‘Watch your bloody mouth.’

Some of the pickets start to laugh.

‘You watch it: Fuck. Off.’

This is Gary Hollingworth’s first experience of an officer from the Met, one of the forces from non-mining areas which is sending officers to coalfields to police the picket lines as the mass pickets grow, and violence becomes more common. Fights are breaking out of the pushing, and good hidings are dished out by both sides. The police say there are political agitators in the crowds; miners suspect agents provocateurs are being planted. Special magistrates’ courts have been set up to deal with the mass arrests. When Gary looks back, this encounter with the London police will mark the point when the conflict became more combative and bitter. As spring turns to summer, talks between the NCB and NUM fail, and some Nottinghamshire miners begin a legal action against the NUM for declaring the strikes official. A friend and colleague of Ian MacGregor, David Hart, sets up an organisation called the National Working Miners’ Committee; Bob Copping, a working winder from Houghton Main, goes to one of their meetings.

At the start of June, all striking mine-workers including Gary, David, Lynda and John receive in the post a photocopied letter bearing the Coal Board letterhead and signed by Ian MacGregor.

This is a strike that should never have happened. It is based on a very serious misrepresentation and distortion of the facts. At great financial cost, miners have supported the strike for 14 weeks because your leaders have told you this:

That the Coal Board is out to butcher the coal industry

That we plan to do away with 70,000 jobs

That we plan to close down 86 pits and leave only 100 working collieries.

If these things were true I would not blame miners for getting angry or for being deeply worried. But these things are absolutely untrue. I state that categorically and solemnly. You have been deliberately misled.

Yours sincerely

Ian MacGregor

Chairman, National Coal Board.

For a few days it is the subject of jokes, then it is forgotten.

On 15 June, Joe Green, a picket from Kellingley colliery, a large pit near Pontefract, dies after being hit by a lorry at Ferrybridge Power Station. On the television news, interviewers and newsreaders ask the NUM leaders to condemn the violent pickets. The leaders refuse on the grounds that no one is being asked to condemn violent police officers.

In the Dearne, anger about Joe Green’s death is raw as Gary and Kenny organise their transport for a mass picket of the coking plant at Orgreave, a village to the north of Sheffield, on 18 June. Union officials say the plant has been supplying coke to power stations in breach of an agreement with the NUM. There have been large pickets there for the last few weeks, but under Arthur Scargill’s direction, union leaders have planned a larger-scale gathering with striking miners and their supporters from across the country. The aim will be to stop the outside contractor lorry drivers getting in or out, but also to make a memorable show of solidarity and support.

Gary, Kenny and John travel down to Orgreave with six other men in a transit van. John’s Ford Escort, being lime green, has become known to the police and is guaranteed to be pulled over. Ordinarily a transit would be a target too, but today as they drive south there are no roadblocks and few police patrol cars on the M1. Equally unusual are the policemen stationed along the roads leading towards the coking plant, directing the pickets to a makeshift car park like stewards at a country show. Once they are parked, Gary and the others join crowds ushered to an expanse of brown, scrubby grass in front of the plant’s main gates.

As a teenager Gary had thought that coking plants, with their vast orange-glowing ovens and sky-gorging white clouds of steam, looked like scenes from the Apocalypse. Now, as they approach it, Orgreave’s looks as if it could open its jaws and swallow them all in a single gulp, should it wish. The squat gas holders and high, smoking chimneys rise over the scrubland like the towers of a black citadel. In front of them is a long line of police about ten men deep. To the side, among some smaller buildings, is an encampment of police vans, horseboxes, ambulances, Portakabins and tents that looks the size of a small housing estate. Thousands more policemen are milling about here, and in some of the tents men are serving food and drinks to officers not deployed on the line. All around the scrubland mounted police wait in wheatfields, and dog handlers stand with their Alsatians on the edges of woodland. One of the men from the van says, ‘Are you sure t’ signs said “Orgreave”? Cos it looks like we’ve walked into bloody Agincourt.’

By 7.45 a.m. there are about five or six thousand pickets outside the plant, and Arthur Scargill is giving out instructions using a loudhailer. From the walls of nearby buildings camera crews are filming them. A few men and women are selling political newspapers, and on the ground there are piles of fresh placards stapled to wooden poles for people to take. Some carrying the Socialist Workers Party logo read ‘TURN ORGREAVE INTO SALTLEY’.

At 8 a.m., when the lorries are due to collect their loads of coke, the pickets mass in front of the police. Gary and the men from the van are near the front, and watch police wearing visored crash helmets and carrying long Perspex shields move to the front of the police line opposite them, in response, it seems, to people throwing stones and pieces of coke. As the convoy of lorries comes down the road to the plant, Gary joins with the crowd singing ‘Here we go, here we go’, and surges forward with them against the shields of the police, who block their access to the road. The dark blue line buckles in places, and then pushes back.

This is customary, but this morning, after less than a minute, Gary suddenly feels the crowd behind him falling away and hears men shouting warnings; looking up, he sees the police line open, and mounted officers charge out. He turns and sprints away with the others, the sounds of the hooves on the hard earth loud in his ears. When the horses pull up and trot back behind the lines, the pickets go back to the police angrily asking why the horses were sent in so quickly, and the mounted officers charge again. Some of the police and horses are hit by flying stones.

The police retreat, but now there is movement of officers on foot behind the main line of shields. The officer in charge uses a loudhailer to tell the pickets he will deploy short shield units if they don’t move back.

A man next to Gary says, ‘A short
what
?’ and then the line opens again; this time the horses are followed by policemen wearing blue crash helmets and armed with small shields and drawn truncheons.

‘Bloody hell,’ says the man.

Assisted by some officers without shields, the policemen in crash helmets chase the pickets as they scatter, randomly grabbing and arresting men and dragging them behind the police line. Some police and pickets throw punches, and some police beat men with their truncheons as they lie on the ground. One of the men from Gary’s van, a Grimethorpe miner called Brian, does not turn to run, and is shoved aside by a policeman. Brian, who is known for his truculence and short temper, shoves back, and punches the policeman on his jaw. Seeing this, three other police officers run to Brian, knock him to the ground and half-march, half-drag him back behind their line with his arms up behind his back.

The charge lasts only a few minutes, but to Gary it feels like about half an hour. When the police withdraw the scrubland is hung with clouds of fine dust. Most of the pickets wear T-shirts, jeans, trainers and light jackets, and there are lost shoes, caps and jackets lying about on the ground, as if people have vanished leaving only their clothes behind. On the road, ambulances with flashing lights are already speeding away to take injured men to hospital. Gary finds Kenny and then the others, and they all look for Brian. When they don’t find him, they guess that he has been arrested and locked up in a police van.

When the laden lorries emerge at 9.25 a.m., there is more pushing and another charge from the mounted officers and short shield squad. To cheers from the miners, and with all the cameras turned on him, Arthur Scargill walks along the police line shaking his head in disapproval. After that the police stay in place, and most of the pickets head off to other pits, or into Orgreave village to buy food and drink from an Asda. Those who stay play football, stand about talking, or sunbathe; the strike has given them an unusual opportunity to get a suntan and some are keen to take it even here.

Gary’s group eventually finds Brian sitting in the shade of some trees. He has been beaten by policemen: his face is clear but when he lifts his shirt, his torso is livid with cuts and bruising. ‘No arrest,’ he says. ‘They just dumped me here and left me.’ The men take him to a waiting ambulance, and one accompanies him to hospital. The others, made freshly determined by Brian’s injuries and police tactics, drive in the transit to the picket line at Sutton colliery in Nottinghamshire. As miners arrive at Sutton through the day, they bring news of another big police charge at Orgreave, far more frightening and violent than those that had preceded it.

This charge and its aftermath are given prominence in long TV news reports from Orgreave that evening. Not long after Gary and his group had left, hundreds of police, mounted units, dog handlers and short shield squads charge those pickets remaining on the scrubland. The news reports say this is in response to stone-throwing, but the police will give various reasons and no single cause is ever established. Some police officers are seen beating pickets with their truncheons, and fights break out, but most pickets are chased to the only exit from the scrubland, a narrow footbridge over a steep-sided railway cutting. To escape, men scramble down the cutting sides, then run across the tracks and into Orgreave village. Foot and mounted police pursue them, using their truncheons and swiping down at the people on the ground with long batons. Some of the pickets throw stones, pieces of wood and old car parts from a scrapyard. A scrapped car is dragged across the road as a barricade, and set alight. Others run, or hide behind walls, or try to escape down the snickets between houses. Everywhere among the smoke and rubble there are bleeding men standing dazed or lying in the grass verges. To Gary and Elaine watching the news that evening, it resembles a scene from the troubles in Northern Ireland; it is as if an army has been sent against them. Later, Kenny calls to tell them that Brian is back home but has three broken ribs.

More than ninety men are arrested at Orgreave and put in cells, and seventy-one of them are charged with riot, which carries a maximum term of life imprisonment. A year later all are acquitted when the prosecution withdraws from the trial of the first fifteen men because of unreliable police evidence.

*

On Stuart Street, Thurnscoe, David and Marie watch a TV documentary about the strike featuring a mining village in West Yorkshire. Over opening footage of colliery headgears and terraced houses the narrator solemnly introduces ‘a tough and rugged people’ and talks about their long history of hardship. He continues in this vein for most of the programme, using the word ‘tough’ with great frequency.

David, sitting on the settee with Gemma the Labrador at his feet, frowns. ‘They always go on like this about people in pit villages being tough, and I never know what they mean. Do you think it means we seem to have no emotion?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Marie. ‘I never know either.’

‘Maybe it’s not emotion. Maybe it’s intelligence. Do you think we come over to other people as thick?’

‘We might do,’ she replies, thinking about it. ‘I mean, we probably are thick compared to them on t’ telly, aren’t we?’