Page 116 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

would be woken each morning at 5am, fight for our turn in the showers, be
taken for a greasy breakfast then on traffic or intercept duty by 6am.

Mutual Aid duty meant parading on a Sunday afternoon, being conveyed
by coach to accommodation, ready for duty the following Monday morning.
We would be stood down late of Friday and conveyed homeward,
frequently to find some of us had been posted to football duties on the
Saturday. On Mutual Aid weekends, it was not uncommon to only have
Saturday evening and Sunday morning off before starting all over again.

Orgreave

The 'Battle of Orgreave' as it became known by the press, was on 18 June
th
1984 at the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham, which striking miners
were attempting to blockade. The confrontation, between about 5,000
miners and the same number of police, erupted into violent battles resulting
in police on horseback charging with truncheons drawn – 51 pickets and 72
policemen were injured. Other less well known, but bloody, battles between
pickets and police took place, for example, in Maltby, South Yorkshire.

During the strike, 11,291 people were arrested, mainly for breaches of the
peace or obstructing roads whilst picketing. 8,392 were charged and
between 150–200 were subsequently imprisoned.

Nevertheless, most picket lines were non-violent. Instances of violence
directed against working miners were reported from the start.

My duty at Orgreave started with a parade at 0145 hours at Queens Road
Police Station. By 02:30 we’d been conveyed from Thornbridge Avenue
Motorway Control Centre, arriving at the Orgreave Coking Plant at 05:30.

The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation that became a pivotal
event in the 1984–85 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in
British industrial history. Most media reports at the time depicted it as "an act
of self-defence by police who had come under attack", and there still exists a
body of opinion that the police at Orgreave "were upholding the law in the
face of intimidation from thousands of strikers".
At the earlier parade and via radio messages after we arrived, we were
informed that intelligence had been received that political agitators, possibly
from the National Front were mingling among the protesting miners,

I can only speak from my own experience as there was in fact more than one
‘locus in quo’ or "scene of the event". There was more than one confrontation
that day as gangs split into groups around the plant. Our serial was poorly
equipped, with no riot shields or riot helmets. Aware of this, police control
positioned us at the rear of the plant where we were told to form a phalanx Page116