Orgreave 30th anniversary – solidarity and celebration

Orgreave 30-year anniversary – community, solidarity and celebration

Alan Munro, Sheffield Socialist Party reports on Orgreave mass picnic and festival where he was a steward.

Around 1,000 ex-miners, their families and supporters ignored the dark clouds gathering for a day of community, solidarity and celebration at the 30-year anniversary mass picnic and festival on 14 June in a park near the site of the Battle of Orgreave.

Speeches and heart-thumping music celebrated the resistance of working-class people to Thatcher then and Cameron today. The air was full of political debate. One of the official security staff asked me, as a steward, what the Unite union’s inflatable rat represented. I replied: “The rat represents the capitalists feeding off the hard work of the working-class.”

There was a widespread feeling that it could even become an annual event. The day’s events were organised by the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) which is demanding an independent public inquiry into the events at Orgreave on 18 June 1984. In an upcoming issue, the Socialist will carry an interview with Barbara Jackson, secretary of OTJC.

45 copies of the Socialist were sold at the event and three people gave their details to get involved in the Socialist Party.


A Civil War Without Guns

By Ken Smith

  • Book available at www.leftbooks.co.uk