On this day, 18 June 1984, the battle of Orgreave took place when striking miners faced off against thousands of police as they attempted to blockade the Orgreave coking plant in England. The police showed the lengths they would go to to break the strike, with violent attacks, mass arrests and deliberate but fortunately unsuccessful attempts to fabricate evidence and frame miners. And the BBC reversed footage of miners defending themselves from police attacks to try to pretend police were attacked first.
Coal miners were on strike against a pit closure plan by the Conservative government.
Learn more about the dispute in our podcast series: https://workingclasshistory.com/tag/1984-5-miners-strike/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1453815848136894/?type=3
“I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
“This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.
“But enough is enough.
“The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.
“American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”
read this read this read this read this read this read this read this
Read this. In its entirety.
please read this article. and share it with your dumbass facebook relatives who always want to “see both sides”, because here it is straight from a pig’s mouth
VERY very interesting read. Not that it wasn’t anything a lot of us don’t already know or have said a million times but, reading it from an insider’s perspective was very interesting indeed…
