The lies binding Hillsborough to the battle of Orgreave

Ken Capstick in The Guardian


Police covered up their attacks on striking miners. And they used the same tactics after the football tragedy.



‘For those of us who were there when the ranks of police suddenly opened up and launched a cavalry charge, it felt like civil war.’ Photograph: Photofusion/Rex



Just eight miles separates the patch of ground on the outskirts of Sheffield where Orgreave coking plant once stood from Hillsborough stadium, where 96 people were unlawfully killed on 15 April 1989. To those of us involved in the miners’ strike in south Yorkshire in the 1980s, the so-called “battle of Orgreave” and Britain’s worst football disaster have always been linked.

It was a glorious summer’s day on 18 June 1984. With my son and other mineworkers, I set off for Orgreave to take part in a mass demonstration to try to stop coke being moved from the plant to the steelworks at Scunthorpe.

The miners were in a jovial mood, dressed in T-shirts and plimsolls. To save on petrol most of us travelled four or five to a car. We had been on strike for more than three months, had very little money and relied on the £2 picketing money from the union to pay for petrol. Our destination was to be the scene of one of the bloodiest battle grounds in Britain’s industrial history.

We went to Orgreave to fight to save our industry from what has since been revealed, following the release of cabinet papers in January 2014, as a government plan to kill off the coal mining industry, close 75 pits at a cost of approximately 75,000 jobs, and destroy the National Union of Mineworkers.

The battle of Orgreave was a one-sided contest, as miners suddenly found themselves facing not a police force, but a paramilitary force dressed in riot gear, wielding long truncheons, with strategically placed officers with dogs, and a cavalry charge reminiscent of a medieval battleground.

For those of us who were there when the ranks of police suddenly opened up and launched the charge on horseback, it felt like civil war. Miners had no defence other than to try and outrun the horses. Furthermore, we had to run uphill. Many miners were caught and battered to the ground with truncheons, then outnumbered by police on foot before being roughly handled as they were arrested. Those of us who made it to the top of the hill found refuge in a supermarket or in the nearby mining village.

‘Following the battle, 95 miners were charged with riot, an offence which can carry a life sentence.’ Photograph: Mike Forster/Associated News/Rex

No one died at Orgreave, but it was clearly the intention of the police to create what felt like a life-threatening situation. The police faced no threat from the miners at Orgreave that warranted such a violent response, but it was obvious to those present that the police knew they could act with impunity.

Following the battle, 95 miners were charged with riot, an offence which could carry a life sentence. Gareth Peirce, one of the defending solicitors in the abortive trial that followed, wrote in the Guardian in 1985: “Orgreave … revealed that in this country we now have a standing army available to be deployed against gatherings of civilians whose congregation is disliked by senior police officers. It is answerable to no one; it is trained in tactics which have been released to no one, but which include the deliberate maiming and injuring of innocent persons to disperse them, in complete violation of the law.”

Miners' strike: IPCC considers unredacted Orgreave report



I wasn’t in court when the prosecution of the Orgreave miners was thrown out because the evidence did not stack up. But the trial revealed the way police would collaborate and coordinate evidence in order to get convictions or cover up the truth. In this sense, Orgreave can be seen as a dry run for what happened after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. Had the South Yorkshire force not been allowed to get away with what they did at Orgreave, perhaps Hillsborough would never have happened.

As the Hillsborough inquest verdicts have shown, we cannot have an unaccountable police force charged with upholding the rule of law but immune to it. We need to know which politicians or officials gave such immunity to the police, if it was given.

Only a full public inquiry into Orgreave will get at the truth, an inquiry to which all documents must be revealed in unredacted form. This inquiry would not just be in the interests of the miners injured on that day, and in the interests of their families. It would be in all our interests, because we all need to understand how a police force came to believe it was a law unto itself. If we don’t, we risk creating the conditions in which another Hillsborough or Orgreave could happen.

In 1985 the miners shouted from the rooftops, but we weren’t heard. Ignored by the media, many gave up. What happened at Orgreave was not a human tragedy on the same scale as Hillsborough. But now, thanks to the tremendous campaign by the Hillsborough families who lost loved ones, and who refused to give up their fight for justice, we have the chance to discover the truth about what happened at Orgreave too.

Why are Asians under represented in English cricket?

by Girish Menon

A recent ECB survey found that 30 % of the grass root level cricket players were of Asian origin while it reduces dramatically to 6.2 % at the level of first class county cricketers. Why?

When this question was asked to Moeen Ali, he opined among other things, "I also feel we lose heart too quickly. A lot of people think it is easy to be a professional cricketer, but it is difficult. There is a lot of sacrifice and dedication," While some may view Ali's views as suffering from the Stockholm syndrome, in my personal opinion it resembles the 'Lazy Japanese and Thieving Germans' metaphor highlighted by the economist Ha Joon Chang. Hence, Ali's views should not be confused with what in my perspective are some of the actual reasons why there is a dearth of Asian faces in county cricket.

The Cambridge economist Ha Joon Chang has acquired a global reputation as a myth buster and is a must read for all those who wish to contradict the dogmatic neoliberal consensus. Chapter 9 of Ha Joon Chang's old classic Bad Samaritans actually discusses this metaphor in detail. He quotes Beatrice Webb in 1911 describing the Japanese as having 'objectionable notions of leisure and a quite intolerable personal independence'. She was even more scathing about the Koreans: '12 millions of dirty, degraded, sullen, lazy and religionless savages who slouch about in dirty white garments...'  The Germans were typically described by the British as a 'dull and heavy people'. 'Indolence' was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature.

But now that the economies of Japan, Korea and Germany have become world leaders such denigration of their peoples has disappeared. If Moeen Ali's logic was right then Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Indians living in their own countries should also not amount to much in world cricket. But the evidence is to the contrary. So the right question to ask would be why has English cricket not tapped into the great love for cricket among its citizens from the Indian subcontinent?

If it wants the truth, English cricket should examine the issue raised by the Macpherson report on 'institutional racism in the police' and ask if this is true in county cricket as well. Immigrants, as the statistics suggest, from the subcontinent can be found in large numbers in grassroots cricket from the time they joined the British labour force. There are many immigrants only cricket leagues in the UK, e.g in Bradford, where players of good talent can be found. But, as Jass Bhamra's father mentioned in the film Bend it Like Beckham they have not been allowed access to the system. Why, Yorkshire waited till the 1990s to select an Asian player for the first time.

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Of course, if the England team is intended to be made up of players of true English stock only then we need not have this discussion. Some of the revulsion towards Kevin Pietersen among some of the establishment could be better understood using this lens. However, now due to its dwindling base if the ECB  wishes to get the support of Asian cricket lovers it will have to transform the way the game is run.

Secondly, to make it up the ranks in English cricket it is essential to have an expensive well connected coach. Junior county selections are based on this network and any unorthodox talent would be weeded out at the earliest level either because of not having a private coach or because the technique is rendered untenable as it blots the copybook. So, many children of Asian origin from weaker economic backgrounds are weeded out by this network.

This is akin to the methods adopted by parents in the shires where grammar schools exist. Hiring expensive tutors for their wards is the middle class way of crowding out genuinely academic oriented students from weaker economic backgrounds. Better off Asians are equally culpable in distorting the grammar school system and its objectives.

So what could be done. I think positive discrimination is the answer. We only need to look at South African cricket to see what results it can bring. My suggestion would be that every team should have two places reserved: one for a minority player and another for an unorthodox player. This should to some extent break up the parent-coach orthodoxy and breathe some fresh air and dynamism into English cricket.

Personally, I have advised my son that he should play cricket only for pleasure and not to aspire for serious professional cricket because of the opacity in the selection mechanism which means an uncertain economic future. He is 16, a genuine leg spinner with little coaching but with good control on flight and turn. Often he complains about conservative captains and coaches who were unwilling to gamble away a few runs in the hope of getting wickets. Many years ago, when my son was not picked by a county side, I asked the coach the reason and he said because, 'he flights the ball and is slower through the air'. With what conviction then could I have told my lad that you can make a decent living out of cricket if you persevere enough?

Pick 'em early? The fate of young English talent.

Jon Hotten in Cricinfo 

Brian Close: the youngest male cricketer to play Tests for England  © PA Photos

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It was a day for history at North Marine Road. Yorkshire, like the venerable Almanack, are celebrating their 150th anniversary this year. Sunday was also 50 years removed from the first of Geoffrey Boycott's 151 centuries in a Roses game at Bramall Lane, an occasion marked with the presentation of a framed scorecard. And then there was Matthew Fisher, all of 15 years and 212 days old, the youngest player to appear in a competitive county game since Charles Young, who turned out for Hampshire against Kent in 1867, aged 15 years and 131 days.

There is an inevitable melancholy about this great wash of time, refracted through the boys at either end of it. Young, a left-hand allrounder who was born in India, played 38 games across the next 18 years before slipping away into history. No one knows when or where he died, or the circumstances surrounding his end. He was here and then he was gone. We're left with his wickets and his runs and his odd little record, which may stand forever. Fisher is from an entirely different world and a more focused and intense game, yet prodigies always carry with them a chance of unfulfilment that can be unsettling. 

Fifteen, you think, that's just too early, isn't it, however good you may be. For a start, it is such a brief span. Boycott had been retired for 11 years by the time Fisher was born, and no doubt Geoffrey could (and perhaps has) told the young man how fleeting those years can feel.

Yorkshire know a prodigy when they see one. Their 2nd XI keeper Barney Gibson was 15 years and 27 days old when he played against Durham University. Tim Bresnan got a Sunday League game as a 16-year-old. They had the young Sachin, of course, and before him Kevin Sharp, who seemed set for greatness after making a double-hundred for Young England and appearing in the first team at 18.

Then there was Brian Close, a man whose legend exists on different terms to those that his precocity seemed sure to dictate. Born in the same town, Rawdon, as Hedley Verity, he played Under-18 cricket at the age of 11, appeared for Leeds United and England youth as an amateur footballer and was considered bright enough to have attended Oxford or Cambridge had he chosen that path. Instead he became the youngest man ever to play for England in a Test match, in July 1949 at the age of 18, whilst in the process of completing the "double" of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in his first season (another record). Had the world known then that Close would make his final Test appearance almost 27 years later it might have imagined a new Leviathan had come, yet he played just 22 times for England.

In its place, Close's fame is based around his unyielding toughness, the brilliance of his captaincy (six wins and a draw in his seven Tests as England skipper; sacked after being accused of time-wasting in a game for Yorkshire) and his ability to nurture young players both in cricket and in life. Perhaps some of that understanding came from his earliest years, and the burden that they bestowed. He was by almost any measure a wonderful player, almost 35,000 runs, 1171 wickets and 800 catches batting left-handed and bowling right, and yet his first season casts its long shadow.

We are programmed to think that the earlier a talent emerges, the bigger it must be. That is not always the case. It will certainly not be rounded enough to offer anything other than promise, and promise is ephemeral stuff, available only for the briefest of moments. Matthew Fisher has promise, and our good wishes. What he needs most now is simply time.