UKC

Prompted by watching the news last night. A police officer described how another officer from South Yorkshire police told him and others what to put in their statements following 'the battle of Orgreave'.
This, along with Hillsborough, etc makes me wonder what was going on in the South Yorkshire force?

In reply to baron:


Remember, many of the Police at Orgreave weren't local, we are not just talking about a South Yorkshire issue here.

Although it seems Amber Rudd doesn't think it is an issue.

In reply to The New NickB:

Seems likely a fair few of the police at Orgreave weren't even police.

In reply to deepsoup:

What were they then?

In reply to baron:

Maybe somebody out to discredit the police?

In reply to baron:


I'm not sure exactly what deepsoup means, but at a guess, there is a suggestion by some serving officers from the time that they were under orders to act in a way which compromised their legal authority to act as police officers. One officer has claimed that he avoided arresting anybody at Orgreave, as he believed that he would be breaking the law if he did so.

In reply to baron:


SAS?
spies?

In reply to baron:

They were neo-fascist members of the KKK flown in from Alabama. Everyone knows that!

In reply to The New NickB:
I remember trying to visit my parents in Nottingham as a 32 yr-old male on my own and being stopped as I tried to leave the M1 and told to piss off back where I came from (Yorkshire that day).

In reply to The New NickB:

One officer has claimed that he avoided arresting anybody at Orgreave, as he believed that he would be breaking the law if he did so.

It was not all about violence , the police overstepped their powers.
youtube.com/watch?v=2nkeKjgD7YQ&

In reply to Andy Say:
Yes, driving to many places especially with a car full of your mates could be difficult.

In reply to Jim C: These were very troubling times. I don't think anybody had witnessed such demonstrations or police response for a very long time.
I remember people being either behind the miners or they thought Scargill was a rabble rouser. Intimidation, violence and sadly death in the name of either preserving a way of life or upholding the law depending on which side, if any, you where on.

In reply to baron:


There were persistent rumours at the time about soldiers wearing police uniforms being used to reinforce the police. Seems unlikely, 'Squaddie X' would have released a book about Baz, Daz, Gaz, Dinger and Smudge's adventures in blue by now if there was any truth in the rumours.

In reply to deepsoup:


Everybody who was living in a mining community at the time of the strike knows that there were large numbers of squaddies deployed in police uniforms on the picket lines. I remember one occasion during the summer of 84 when 200 supposed coppers in uniform went marching over the Wearmouth bridge in Sunderland on their way to Monkwearmouth pit and every single one of them had a Welsh accent. They were all Welsh guards.

In reply to Rylstone_Cowboy:

Two companies worth of Welsh Guards deploy from Germany and no-one notices, or mentions it to their mates for 30 odd years? Every single one had a welsh accent? There was a lot of talking going on when they marched over that bridge

I wouldn't discount the idea, but I suspect it was the large numbers drafted in from other police forces that gave rise to the rumours.

In reply to The New NickB:

Sorry, not being enigmatic - I went climbing.

I was hinting at the squaddie thing - many believed at the time that squaddies were drafted in to make up the police numbers. Many still do.
Ridge may have a point that we might have heard about it by now if that were the case. Bigger secrets have occasionally been kept for longer though, dunno.

In reply to Andy Say:

Me too, not allowed off motorway when visiting parents even with wife in car

In reply to baron:



Well we now know there will not be a government enquiry into Orgreave which appears to be consistent with the recent revelation that British soldiers will not be prosecuted for war crimes and can continue to torture people without prosecution. It seems the army and the police will be fully supported by the government regardless of any wrong doing. If I remember correctly at the time of the miners strike many police were drafted in so it wasn't just South Yorkshire Police.

In reply to Ridge:


I was there. I know what I saw and heard. It wasn't so much talking as shouting. These coppers or to be precise squaddies in police uniform were all shouting abuse at the local public who were on the side of the miners and they all had Welsh accents. It's no secret that squaddies were deployed on the picket line during the strike. It was the brainchild of Ian McGregor to use a tactic that had been commonplace during his background in the United States where they routinely called out the National Guard to suppress labour disputes. Vote me down all you like but I was there. I lived in a mining community during the strike, I know what went on.

In reply to I like climbing:
I started this thread more as a question about how corrupt SouthYorkshire police were in the 1980's and 1990's than as a thread about police tactics or the actions of the British Army.
While many police were not from South Yorkshire it was detectives from that force who instructed officers from other forces, drafted in to the area to support the local force, to write certain sentences into their statements after the 'Battle of Orgreave'.
(According to officers who were present that day).
A tactic not dissimilar to that used in the editing of officers statements after Hillsborough.
If anybody who wasn't there that day needs to have an idea of what happened I believe there is plenty of news footage available.
The Orgreave incident should be taken in the context of the decade that it happened in and what had proceeded it during the previous months of the miner's strike.

In reply to Rylstone_Cowboy:


It's clear that Margaret Thatcher was looking for ways to support the then chief constable Peter Wright (it seems she was the one who insisted on the horses and dogs) and I guess it's not impossible that she might have authorised extra support from the military- certainly there were many police from outside the region bussed in. Since some of the Thatcher's papers from the period have been excluded from the usual 30 year publication rule for some reason, I don't doubt that she saw the dispute as highly political and it's always troubling when the police are use in pursuit of a particular political agenda. And there is no excuse for the blatant fabrication of evidence by the police which led to the collapse of the prosecutions of Orgreave miners. All that said, just saying 'it's no secret' or 'everybody knows' doesn't make something true - that's how witches get burnt.

And let's not forget that Scargill certainly did see the dispute as political. There's no doubt that, for him, this was also about much more than an industrial dispute. There was a much broader problem of militant (and political) union disruption in many industries (I was brought up in Coventry and my dad worked at British Leyland). There were lots of examples of people in relatively cushy well-paid jobs being called out on strike on the slightest pretext and, especially where those industries were nationalised, the government needed to get control of the situation.

Sure, Ian McGregor wasn't popular (and probably wasn't a particularly pleasant individual), but neither was Michael Edwardes, the South African brought in to try to rescue BL. A sad story of weak management, out of control unions, an 'I'm alright Jack' attitude and no conception that businesses actually had to make a profit in order to be sustainable - or any kind of long-term strategic thinking on either side.

In reply to Ridge:


Yes there were coppers moved round the country during the strike, it was quite common but do you really think they'd draft in coppers from Wales to come to the North East? Think about it. The strike was raging in South Wales. Welsh coppers would have all been needed on their own patch.

In reply to Rylstone_Cowboy:

I was in the Police at the time. I worked at the strike for five separate weeks in different locations. I was drafted in from met. I never saw any disguised coppers, never heard of this tactic at the time or since.