“ … The police complaints watchdog is under pressure to widen its investigation into alleged fabrication of evidence by South Yorkshire officers in the 1980s as new allegations emerge of attempts to frame miners at the Orgreave coking plant clashes.
Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, said the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, should include in their examination of South Yorkshire police’s post-Hillsborough „cover-up“ the force’s alleged framing of 95 miners for serious criminal offences after Orgreave.
„Many miners were subjected to malpractice during the strike by South Yorkshire police – and other forces,“ Kitchen told the Guardian. „I will be asking the NUM’s national executive committee to consider complaining to the IPCC and DPP for the police operations at Orgreave and elsewhere during the strike to be investigated, now the details of what South Yorkshire police did at Hillsborough have been revealed.“
At Orgreave in 1984, police officers on horseback and on foot were filmed beating picketing miners with truncheons, but South Yorkshire police claimed the miners had attacked them first, and prosecuted 95 men for riot and unlawful assembly, which carried potential life sentences. All 95 were acquitted after the prosecution case collapsed following revelations in court that police officers‘ statements had been dictated to them in order to establish evidence of a riot, and one officer’s signature on a statement had been forged. …“
Natürlich sollte einen deratiges seitens der Sowjetunion der 1980er Jahre nicht überraschen … um Margaret Thatcher nicht zu verärgern und um ihr Land (und die Queen?!) besuchen zu dürfen blockierte Gorbatschow (der Politiker, nicht der Wodka) 1984 eine Spende von mehr als einer Million US-Dollar sowjetischer BergarbeiterInnen an ihre streikenden KollegInnen von der NUM in Britannien … (post-)stalinistische Prioritätensetzung eben, der Guardian berichtet:
„At Chequers, Thatcher personally confronted Gorbachev and protested that the Soviet Union was meddling in British matters and would help to prolong the strike by giving the cash. Gorbachev stonewalled, claiming that he was not aware of any such donation. It later transpired that a month before the Chequers meeting, Gorbachev had himself signed the papers authorising the donation.
But Thatcher’s diplomatic offensive worked: no donation reached the British miners during their year-long strike. Gorbachev had embarked on his effort to reform the sclerotic Soviet state and concluded that the wiser option was to continue cultivating the British prime minister for the sake of relations between the two countries. Sacrificing the interests of the British miners was the price to be paid for not upsetting the so-called Iron Lady.“
Der Guardian, die Tageszeitung der aufgeklärt-linksliberalen KonsumentInnen mit Hochschulabschluss, gutem Einkommen und zuweilen einem partiellen schlechten Gewissen hat nach 25 Jahren Arthur Scargill, den damaligen Vorsitzenden der Bergarbeitergewerkschaft National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) zum Bergarbeiterstreik 1984/85 (einige Filmberichte dazu ) Wort kommen lassen … bleibt anzumerken, dass die Zeitung damals die abgespaltene Labourrechte um Roy Jenkins, David Owen und Konsorten in der Social Democratic Party (SDP) unterstüzte und Menschen wie Scargill mit Begriffen wie „Loony Leftist“ und dass natürlich auch Scargill zuweilen mit Vorsicht zu geniessen ist, speziell seitdem er mit der Socialist Labour Party (SLP, auch Scargill’s Little Party genannt) seinen stalinoiden Privatclub gegründet hat, der Artikel ist aber in jedem Fall lesenswert, hier ein Auszug:
„But the NUM’s historic battle did not begin in March 1984, as so many pundits claim. The seeds of the dispute had been sown long before. A pit closure plan in 1981 resulted in miners, including miners in Nottinghamshire, taking unofficial strike action (without a ballot) and forcing Thatcher into a U-turn, or in reality a body swerve.
At that time, Britain’s coal industry was the most efficient and technologically advanced in the world, a result of a tripartite agreement, the Plan For Coal, signed by a Labour government, the National Coal Board (NCB) and the mining trade unions in 1974, and endorsed by Thatcher in 1981. And yet, shortly after I became national president of the NUM in 1982 I was sent anonymously a copy of a secret plan prepared by NCB chiefs earmarking 95 pits for closure, with the loss of 100,000 miners‘ jobs. This plan had been prepared on government instructions following the miners‘ successful unofficial strike in 1981.
I took this document to the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) – its contents were not only denied by government and NCB chiefs, but were disbelieved by militant NUM leaders who had been assured that their pits had long-term futures. However, the exposed revelations struck a chord among our members throughout Britain’s coalfields where colliery managers – clearly acting on instructions from above – had already begun unilaterally changing agreed working practices, affecting shift patterns and supplementary payments.
It became clear that the union would have to take action, but of a type that would win maximum support and have a unifying effect. The NEC accepted a report from me recommending that we call a special national delegate conference, and link our opposition to the pit closure plan with a demand that the coal board negotiate the union’s wage claim. The NEC agreed, and the special conference was held on 21 October 1983. Delegates from all NUM areas were given a detailed report so that they could vote on what action – if any – should be taken. Following a full debate, they agreed to call a national overtime ban from 1 November – until such time as the NCB withdrew its closure plan and agreed to negotiate an increase in miners‘ wages with the NUM.
Over the next four months, the overtime ban had an extraordinary impact. It succeeded in reducing coal output by 30%, or 12m tonnes, thus cutting national coal stocks to about the same level as they had been during the miners‘ unofficial strike in 1981.“
ansonsten hier noch ein Kurzfilm zum Streik im Allgemeinen und zu einer der heftigsten Auseinandersetzungen während des Streiks (Soundtrack by The Redskins):
Entdinglichung 