There were jeers and there were tears. There were angry shouts of “shame!” and a defiant declaration that “the gloves are off”. But when a small class of 11-year-old children arrived unannounced in the cavernous National Union of Mineworkers hall, the rally fell silent.
The year 7 pupils, from XP school in Doncaster, were expecting to learn about the history of South Yorkshire’s coalmines. Instead they witnessed the bitter legacy of the clashes between miners and police on the picket of the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire on 18 June 1984.
Paula Cunningham, a teacher from the new free school, said the students needed to see the “bigger picture of what has gone on in the world”. “This is history for them,” she said. “It’s happened in the past and they need to see and experience the passion that was in this room. The emotion was there as we walked in.”
For some, the experience could have been overwhelming. But 11-year-old Jac ap Harri was impressed: “I thought it was very powerful. I feel really supportive. For me, I didn’t know much about mining until school and it’s something that shouldn’t be forgotten. A lot of grief happened that people should learn about.”
His classmate, Sam Austin, said he really enjoyed the experience but “I didn’t understand half of it … It was very serious.”
Addressing the crowd of ex-pitworkers, their relatives, supporters and union activists, members of the Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign pledged not to give up the fight for an inquiry into the violent episode 32 years ago.
For Steve Rollin, who worked as a social worker in the former mining village of Goldthorpe, the memories of Orgreave were as vivid as they were painful. “I observed throughout that strike the Tory government trying to starve working families back to work.
“I had to dish out section 17 [of the Children Act 1989] money to keep kids out of care – these families were on the brink of having their kinds removed. It had a devastating effect on families, not just from Sheffield but across South Yorkshire,” he said.
Sitting at the back of the huge hall, which is steeped in mineworkers’ flags from across the region, Rollin said the episode had left a mental scar on families across South Yorkshire: “I think there’s been a lack of trust in the police in particular but devastating in terms of work and opportunities.
“It was the pit or glassworks for kids that had failed the 11-plus – we’re returning to that now with grammar schools.”
Goldthorpe, a once-booming mining village about 10 miles east of Barnsley, hit the headlines in 2013 when more than 2,000 residents celebrated the death of Margaret Thatcher with a mock effigy and a party in the streets. Tom Goodwin, a former miner who lives in the village, said it was still suffering the effects of the mine closures 30 years ago.
“When we go back to our own village we can see the devastation,” he said. “You can tell how poor an area is when you can count takeaways – Goldthorpe is saturated with takeaways. No real jobs, just zero-hour contracts. There’s nowt for the young, just drugs and Facebook,” he said after the Orgreave rally in Barnsley.
“It was a proud village where everybody used to come, buy shops, drink and now it’s rundown. There’s anger at the elite.”
For some, home secretary Amber Rudd’s announcement came as no surprise – an “establishment cover-up”, said Goodwin – but for others it reawakened painful memories.
Chris Horne said her husband, Kevin, still suffered night terrors from the 1984 clashes. “He still has his moments. You know that he’s thinking about it. Sometimes when he’s asleep he jumps and he will say, ‘I was dreaming about what happened,’” she said.
Like 94 others, Kevin Horne was arrested and charged with unlawful assembly. A year later the charges were dropped. “I’ve got three little children and they were upset all that year because they didn’t know whether they were going to have a dad any more. They still now are disgusted,” she said.
Chris Hockney, deputy chair of the Orgreave campaign, said an inquiry would have helped to heal old wounds. “There’s a lot of mistrust and bitterness about what they did in 1984 and an inquiry would help get to the bottom of that,” he said.
“There’s certainly none or very little trust in a lot of the police, but it’s not against the day-to-day officers – it’s the hierarchy.”
James McElhoney, from Holmfirth in Huddersfield, described Rudd’s decision as “class war”. “To me, Orgreave was the pivotal point in trade union and class relations in this country,” he said.
“It’s what started the kicking that successive Conservative governments have given working-class communities in this country and they continue to do so – but they’ve got even bigger boots on now than they did in the 70s and 80s.”
