PHIL MAXWELL

The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign includes ex-miners, Trades Unionists, activists and others who are determined to get justice for miners who were victims of police lies and cover ups at Orgreave in June 1984. Most of these photographs were taken during the time of the Miner’s strike.

Orgreave Coking Plant, now demolished, stood on the outskirts of Sheffield, just 8 miles from Hillsborough Stadium , scene of the Hillsborough disaster on 15th April 1989, in which 96 Liverpool supporters were, as the jury at the recent inquests determined, unlawfully killed. The plant supplied coke to the power station at Scunthorpe some 20 miles away.

On that day, 95 miners were arrested when thousands of police officers from across the country brutally assaulted miners striking to defend jobs and mining communities. At subsequent court cases the evidence presented by South Yorkshire Police was heavily discredited and 39 miners were later awarded out of court settlements.

Yet no police officers, some of whom were told not to write anything in their note books on June 18 were ever charged of any offence despite conclusive evidence of assault, perjury, preventing the course of justice and misconduct in public office. Five years later at Hillsborough, history repeated itself when police officers were also instructed not to write anything in their note books. Some of the same senior officers were involved in the aftermath of both scandals.

Striking miner John Dunn (below) told me how he was hit by a police truncheon, thrown onto the floor of a police van and denied medical attention to a wound on his head for hours. Subsequently he was found guilty of trumped up charges in court. All of the miners who were beaten and arrested at Orgreave are still waiting for justice. 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the miners strike.

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