ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the role of the police during the Miners’ Strike. It examines the policing of the Strike at both national and local level. The Chapter highlights whether the interviewees think that the policing of the Strike was very different from that which had gone before - in terms of previous industrial disputes, previous miners’ strikes and policing of the community at large. As A. Callinicos and M. Simons state ‘The result was the greatest violence seen in a British industrial dispute since before the First World War’. Whether the blame for the violence is attributed to the police or to the miners, the events at Orgreave cannot be ignored and are relevant both in terms of the policing of the Strike and also in terms of the media portrayal. Policing progressed from simple control of pickets at the various coal mines to stopping people on their way to picket, to the use of ‘out of area’ police.
