Battle of Orgreave
Orgreave Coking Works (1989)
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| Date | 18 June 1984 |
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| Location | Orgreave, South Yorkshire, England |
| Coordinates | 53°22′40″N 1°22′20″W / 53.377725°N 1.372188°WCoordinates: 53°22′40″N 1°22′20″W / 53.377725°N 1.372188°W |
| Type | Civil disorder |
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| Non-fatal injuries | 123 |
| Inquiries | Independent Police Complaints Commission (June 2015) |
| Arrest(s) | 95 |
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| Verdict | Acquitted |
| Litigation | Arthur Critchlow and 38 Others v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police (1990) |
| Awards | £425,000 |
 Orgreave
Orgreave shown within South Yorkshire
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The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between police and pickets at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant in Orgreave, South Yorkshire. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–85 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.Alastair Stewart has characterised it as "a defining and ghastly moment" that "changed, forever, the conduct of industrial relations and how this country functions as an economy and as a democracy." Historian Tristram Hunt has described the confrontation as "almost medieval in its choreography... at various stages a siege, a battle, a chase, a rout and, finally, a brutal example of legalised state violence." Most contemporary media reports 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". Civil liberties pressure group Liberty has said: "There was a riot. But it was a police riot."
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) deployed 5,000 pickets from across the UK, who planned to use sheer numbers ("mass picketing") to prevent access to the works by strike-breaking lorries that collected coke for use at the BSC mill in Scunthorpe. The police were determined not to see a repeat of 1972's Battle of Saltley Gate – where 30,000 pickets had overwhelmed 800 police officers – and deployed around 6,000 officers from 18 different forces at Orgreave, equipped with riot gear and supported by police dogs and 42 mounted police officers. Robert East et al, writing in the Journal of Law and Society in 1985, suggested that rather than maintaining order and upholding the law, "the police intended that Orgreave would be a 'battle' where, as a result of their preparation and organisation, they would 'defeat' the pickets." Michael Mansfield said: "They wanted to teach the miners a lesson – a big lesson, such that they wouldn't come out in force again."
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