Campaigners are right to say that the miners’ strike, which saw the violent repression of strikers at Orgreave in 1984, remains an enduring source of injustice (Government launches Orgreave inquiry, 40 years after clashes at miners’ strike, 20 July). And Pete Wilcox, the bishop of Sheffield, who is to chair the Orgreave inquiry, is right to recognise that the acknowledgment of truth is essential for long-term community healing.
Sadly, Orgreave is not the only example of where truth and justice have been forsaken when excessive violence has been used against people on strike. Two hundred years ago, on 3 August 1825, six people were seriously wounded and seven killed by soldiers at North Sands, Sunderland, during the 1825 seamen’s strike. The killings were met with anger and outrage, with many local people believing that those who died had been wilfully murdered.
Soldiers had fired like target practice into a crowd of 100 from a boat on the River Wear. The threat posed by the crowd, made up of a combination of women, children, strikers, workers and bystanders, was greatly exaggerated. The only inquiries were two short inquests into just two of the seven deaths.
At the time, the killings were reported in national newspapers and were undoubtedly one of the most significant events of 1825. What happened at Sunderland is not so different from that six years earlier at Peterloo, on 16 August 1819, yet knowledge and awareness of these two massacres are vastly different. The Sunderland seafarers’ union, the Seamen’s Loyal Standard Association, stated that 3 August 1825 should “ever be remembered”, but over time, the North Sands Massacre has been virtually forgotten.
The denial of truth and justice at Orgreave is unfortunately just one of several incidents where those policing industrial action have used unnecessary violence and then placed the blame on their victims. All victims of historical injustice should be remembered and their communities allowed to heal.
Dr David Gordon Scott
The Open University
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