Soldato
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The Battle of Orgreave
- Thread starter Danthus
- Start date
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Funny how that never happened.
Too busy looking after their own and afraid of what would be discovered about Arthur Scargill and the NUM trying to bring about their socialist revolution.
Doesn't warrant any enquiry.
I remember watching the 'miners' strikes, it was just a collection of anyone who fancied taking a pop at the police and Thatcher.
Their intention was to disrupt and cause trouble.
It was never a peaceful demonstration, pelting the police with rocks will only have 1 outcome and the police weren't just going to stand there and get injured.
It was also in the midst of the 80s' city riots where the police were the frontline targets for every unhappy idiot to have a go at.
You poke a hornets nest, you're going to get stung - Move on
I remember watching the 'miners' strikes, it was just a collection of anyone who fancied taking a pop at the police and Thatcher.
Their intention was to disrupt and cause trouble.
It was never a peaceful demonstration, pelting the police with rocks will only have 1 outcome and the police weren't just going to stand there and get injured.
It was also in the midst of the 80s' city riots where the police were the frontline targets for every unhappy idiot to have a go at.
You poke a hornets nest, you're going to get stung - Move on
As someone who was actually there during that period I think it's the right decision. As has been stated before, we all know that there was massive corruption within SYP at the time. They were given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to the miners with guarantees that no action would be taken against them. I'm not saying we miners were angels but the force used against us during the whole of the strike really was disproportionate. At Orgreave the police antagonised the miners at every opportunity. They had their pay statements sellotaped to their shields and used to threw pennies over them telling us to go and feed our families.
We were fighting for our livelihoods and that of our children, you can see the effects of this if you go back to the area today. The place I grew up in is unrecognisable from my childhood and I would never go back to live there now.
An inquiry would be costly and drawn out and I bet nothing would be achieved from it. No one would be held to account and the so-called "lessons learned" have surely already been learned. It wasn't just SYP who were there during Orgreave, there were lots from the Met who were the worst cos they knew they could go safely back home to London and let SYP pick up the pieces.
We were fighting for our livelihoods and that of our children, you can see the effects of this if you go back to the area today. The place I grew up in is unrecognisable from my childhood and I would never go back to live there now.
An inquiry would be costly and drawn out and I bet nothing would be achieved from it. No one would be held to account and the so-called "lessons learned" have surely already been learned. It wasn't just SYP who were there during Orgreave, there were lots from the Met who were the worst cos they knew they could go safely back home to London and let SYP pick up the pieces.
SYP were definitely dirty as hell that day. I'm not sure that was the wrong way to be given the circumstances.
Have to admit I'm perplexed (and a bit sickened) that people like Dianne Abbot are comparing Orgreave to Hillsborough. However bad it was, no-one died that day.
Have to admit I'm perplexed (and a bit sickened) that people like Dianne Abbot are comparing Orgreave to Hillsborough. However bad it was, no-one died that day.
Man of Honour
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With Stoke being a Mining City I had loads of mates who went up on coaches for a fight. I don't really know anything about what happened, just that they were going up there for trouble.
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"Mining union exploits genuine miners to agitate for fall of democratically elected government and fails"
There you go, enquiry over.
There was plenty of wrongdoing on both sides of this dispute (look up "David Wilkie" for details) but any "enquiry" is likely to gloss over the union and political organisations' roles in it and simply blame the police. This resurrection is political and nothing to do with "justice". It would just hand millions to lawyers for no good outcome.
There you go, enquiry over.
There was plenty of wrongdoing on both sides of this dispute (look up "David Wilkie" for details) but any "enquiry" is likely to gloss over the union and political organisations' roles in it and simply blame the police. This resurrection is political and nothing to do with "justice". It would just hand millions to lawyers for no good outcome.
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As is the case even today, most of the pickets were disrupted by the labour left loonies who just wanted to destroy anything. It didn't take much to set a crowd off but the vast majority of miners were there purely to try and protect their livelihoods the best they knew how with no interest in violence. I remember an average picket line was us shoving against the police shields for a few minutes and when everyone was tired we'd go home, often walking and talking with the police we'd just been shoving against as we made our way back to our cars.
My dad was at Orgreave and and it's true, many came for a fight, but more were there for legit reasons. My father lost all respect he had for SY Police after Orgreave and we know the track record SY Police have don't we...
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
What proportion of currently serving SYP officers were either on duty or in positions of power and influence in 1982?
What proportion of currently serving SYP officers were even BORN in 1982?
This sort of feeling is just irrational and causes more problems than it ever solves.
I was 19 at the time and one of the expolited ones. I was never into politics and ended up blindly following and believing everything the union told us. However, I'm a lot older and wiser now (wife won't agree though) and looking back I can see that although we went on strike for the right reasons (loss of jobs, communities etc) we were hijacked by people with their own agenda. I still believe to this day that if Arthur Scargill had called a proper ballet then all the miners would have come out on strike and things could well have turned out differently.
I made my own mind up several years later by leaving the pits and joining the Army. That in itself caused a rift between my father and me as he saw it as me selling out and joining the establishment. He still can't talk about my Army career now even though I've seen and done things I never would have had I remained a miner.
Caporegime
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The police arent a political army. They had no right to burst the strikes or picket lines. The police are to keep the peace only.
It's worth noting that many of the police were volunteers to do this work, which tells you their mentality going into the altercations.
It's worth noting that many of the police were volunteers to do this work, which tells you their mentality going into the altercations.
[TW]Fox;30165356 said:
It is irrational to you and I but some people just cannot let anything go. When I go home you can still feel the resentment towards the Conservatives and SYP for what happened during that period. It's also why no one there will ever vote for a Conservative no matter how bad the other parties are. All we've done is hold on to our negativity and passed it down to our children who now pass it down to theirs (Northern Ireland anyone?).
Many were army, too.