The Battle of Orgreave took place 40 years ago but the scars still run deep across working class communities across the country.
A new Channel 4 documentary, featuring previously unseen video footage, is now taking a look at what happened as miners still campaign for justice. Stef Wysocki, who features in the documentary, was there on June 18, 1984. He described how he was suddenly arrested by the police for throwing stones – despite not having done anything.
Stef said: “I don’t know where police come from, they both grabbed hold of me, ‘You’re under arrest.’ I says ‘What for?’ He says ‘Throwing stones at police.’ I said ‘Look at my hands, they’re clean.’ I said ‘I’ve done nowt.’ They both of them frog marching me down street there. I got down to police cordon where shields were where they’re all interlocked.
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“And … they bounced me off of shields and I were… punched, kneed, kicked. I got fist—fist and knees coming at me all over. I more or less walked into the police line, and they more or less carried me out. I’d come from my home to go picketing, to be locked up, beaten up and then charged with a 25-year sentence. Didn’t go down very well at all. Got a family, I were married. It were really frightening. How has it come to this?”
Around 95 miners were arrested at Orgreave and more than 100 were injured by the police, armed with truncheons and shields. However, police testimonies at the following trials were identical, and Tony Munday, a police officer who also appears in the documentary, spoke about what happened behind the scenes.
He said: “At Orgreave, the arresting officers were directed to write out statements. The senior South Yorkshire detective comes in, he says ‘Right, everyone, I’m going to dictate what I want you to, how to start your statements’.
“But this isn’t a request, this is an instruction, this is an order. So, he then dictated probably a paragraph, two paragraphs, and essentially, they were the components of the offence of riot, in fear and expectation of violence for example. And I thought well this is really bizarre. Throughout my police career I always told the truth.”
Stef Wysocki faced a riot conviction, which could have led to 25 years in jail. Speaking to the BBC in 2015, he said the trial was “horrendous” as it went on for 48 days, but with the police testimonies not matching the facts, the whole trial collapsed.
However, there has never been anyone held to account for what happened. In his 2015 interview, Stef said he believed then Prime-Minister Margaret Thatcher had “wanted to prove a point” and he called the whole thing “disgusting”. To this day, Stef campaigns for a full inquiry into what happened, and for justice for everyone involved,
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