The Battle of Orgreave

The Battle of Orgreave was threatening to be one of the most violent confrontations between riot police and pickets in British history yet the government, notably Margaret Thatcher’s classification of the strike as “mob violence” and her branding of the miners as “the enemy within” (Correia: 95), did not help to defuse the situation. Instead they provoked the miners to come at them by placing an enormous amount of authority in the way of them.

The police did not need to deploy in such big numbers at Orgreave during the picketing because it was relatively peaceful at the time. The authorities being there with their helmets, truncheons, shields, dogs, and horses was the cause for this violent battle. Of course at the time, it seemed as though the authorities, including the government, wanted this to happen so as to make it seem as though miners’ are all outcasts from the majority population with their “vicious” act. This picket line and the yearlong strike against the digging pits was the beginning of the end for the already diminishing coal industry in the United Kingdom.

The pickets knew that eight thousand plus police officers (East, Power, and Thomas 1985: 309) would not have been deployed to one picket line if a battle were not to happen. The loud battle cries they chanted in unison while banging their shields also confirmed it. Miners’ recalled driving over to Orgreave’s from all over the country, Scotland and Wales included, to join the strike expecting to be detoured somewhere else or be pulled over and get sent back. Nothing of the sort happened but instead police waved them on and helped park their cars. It seemed that the police intended that Orgreave would be a “battle”, and would not end until the pickets were “defeated” (East, Power, and Thomas 1985: 310). The determination and preparedness of the police force resulted in a kind of mini-war instead of the defusing the situation.

The government got what they wanted on June 18th, 1984. Who started the battle, no one knows for sure but once it started there was no turning back. The pickets’ threw bricks and stones and charged at the long shielded front line of officers. While the coppers on horses came out from behind the line and ran over people while hitting and bashing miners’ who were running away. There was an incident where a man climbed up a wall to let the horses pass by then one of the coppers knocked him straight across the legs with his truncheon and broke his two legs. There was another incident in which a man of about fifty sitting on a wall catching his breath was knocked across the forehead by a mounted copper, for no reason at all (East, Power, and Thomas 1985: 310). These incidents show the consequences of governmental intervention in a dispute such as the mining strikes.

On June 18th 1984, Jeremy Deller was watching a news broadcast of this event on TV with people, horses, and dogs running around chasing each other while punching and beating one another. He saw mounted coppers hitting people with their truncheons and coppers with shields hording off an attack by the street clothed people. This historical moment in English history in which state power was enforcing itself, would stay in Deller’s mind for years to come. Not until he undertook research of the event years later did he find out the historical perspective and significance of the confrontation. He found out that it was a day in which had been anticipated and planned for by the government (Deller, 2002: 7). With this discovery, he came up with an idea, a project to re-enact this event so as to brand this into the history books for the future generations to know about.

Mac McLoughlin, a former police officer during the mayhem, is from a family of miners’ so he understands the pain and hard work the pickets must have gone through to make a living. He remembers seeing an incident in which a police officer from Manchester, a non-mining town, had a picket in a headlock. McLoughlin did not know why because the picket was not fighting back or anything. Just then the officer calls over a buddy and tells him to hit the picket, which is followed by a nasty whack to the forehead of the seemingly cooperative kid. Many incidents related to ones like these shows the consequences of a state trying to assert its hegemonic power over its people. It also shows how determined each side were to make a statement to one another.

Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of this historic battle at Orgreave on June 18th, 2001 was to serve as a historical and political piece of dialogical art. It took him and others a year to collect all the information needed for the re-enactment. They interviewed the ex-miners’ that were involved in the incident and also the police officers who were there. He got over eight hundred ex-miners’ to participate in his project and some former police officers as well (Deller 2002: 7). He wanted to make it as real as possible so he hired historical re-enactment expert Howard Giles, and riot police training officers to train the volunteers. He decided to shoot the film in the same vicinity of the actual battle because that would give it that much more significance. Jeremy asked most of the ex-miners’ to play the role of officers and former officers the role of pickets to make them see through a different perspective. The re-enactment was for historical and memorbilia purposes but the people involved were “at times veered towards real violence” (Correia, 2006: 100), insisting on a remaining edginess between ex-miners’ and former officers.

The media portrayed the battle as though the miners started the whole medley and should be looked upon as though they are the outcasts of society. This is a reminder of Roland Barthes
“The Blue Guide” and how people only focus on one aspect of place or event and forget about the rest. Thinking of Spain as only as a place of classical ballet and old monuments is like thinking the officers were all innocent and did not do anything to provoke the Battle of Orgreave. This re-enactment gave many of the ex-miners’ that took part in it to reassert the truth of what really happened on that day. In this sense the project gave a voice to the miners’ who were not given a chance to tell their side of the story. They could express their “criticism” and their “deep distrust” of official truth through this project, letting the anger out so the process of healing and cooperation can begin between the mining and policing communities.

The dialogical art project clearly depicted the violence that was unlawfully started by the government and was bent in supporting the miners’ action because during the “real” event, the police had all the support from the media. This re-enactment gave the miners’ a chance to tell their side of the story and how it all went down. It also showed the government’s weakness to have to resort to such extreme measures of sending mass amounts of officers to a picket line in which was not doing anything troublesome except protesting. The consequences of sending the coppers most likely provoked the Battle of Orgreave. I mean what would you do if the so called protectors of the streets started provoking you by waving money and calling you names because you were a miner?

The mass strike did not end at Orgreave but most definitely increased the hatred and bitterness between picketing and non-picketing miners alike. Many families were torn apart because of divided loyalties and still are into this day (Corriea 2006: 96) but the re-enactment in a way started the healing of family ties and now is slowly fading into history so people can be as one community again. The main reason that put pit communities into such poverty and
violence after the shutting down of collieries was the fact that jobs were taken away from generations of families. If you take the pit away from the pit communities, what exactly is it there for (Deller 2002: 22)?

The main intention for this project was to make The Battle of Orgreave’s a “part of the lineage of decisive battles in English History” (Deller 2002: 7). In other words he wanted to
show the people, mainly the English people, that events like the one in Orgreave were decisive moments in the rich history of England. “Intrapersonal interactions are really the key to political transformation” (Berger 1999: 97). This was a day in which a bunch of so-called “evil” miners’ defied the all mighty English government by standing up to them. This battle helped the miners’ in the sense of lifting their spirits but as a result lost their jobs when the coalmines closed down. From this film, the mending of relationships between the police and mining communities has began and was one of the main implications of this dialogical art project.

I thought the project was a very interesting one because of the fact that Deller included former miners and police officers. This is "the kind of interactions between the artist and the respective community partner" (Kwon 2002: 117) that needed to be established to be a success. Without this aspect it would not have been accepted by the English community because of the fact that it was a day in which many families were torn apart. By including the formers, the project was a success in the sense that people worked together and created a historical archive for this important event. The miners coming back to the battleground of the infamous battle where their lives were pretty much taken away is interesting and important because to have some closure in life, people must return to the so-called “battleground” and forgive. This is what I think Deller was trying to do by gathering some of the formers and reuniting them under a better situation.

This film is also a very reveling of the English way of life and probably brought to light to the people of the world, and maybe to the English themselves, that England has its problems too. When people think of England they think of old castles, beautiful old houses from the 1500s, red suited soldiers in black hats but just do not know the truth of the matter. “Through the work I try to construct a concrete, immediate and personal relationship with me and the viewer that locates us within the network of political cause and effect” (Berger 1999: 61). This quote gives a good description of what the art project was trying to portray, which was the political and the personal sides, which resulted in the battle.