Battle of Orgreave: Former miner recalls memories of arrest on day of bloody clash with police

“As I was walking through the police station I could see all the blood and snot in the cells there and when we got in this quadrangle there were lads stopping us and asking us for our shirts and jumpers and things like that to bandage the lads up. There were lads who had bad injuries including head injuries.”

Mr Horne was ultimately charged with unlawful assembly and had to wait over a year until hearing the case against him had been dropped in the wake of the collapse of trial of other miners charged with riot.

One of the most shocking and infamous pieces of film from Orgreave was of Russell Broomhead, then a Houghton Main miner, being beaten around the head with a police baton as he was getting up from the ground. Despite the footage he was charged with riot only for the case to be dropped.

Johnny Wood, who worked at the neighbouring Grimethorpe pit, was also at Orgreave and knew Mr Broomhead at the time.

“He was such a lovely, friendly lad. He had a gentle spirit about him. So when you saw that on the television and you knew it was him, you know that is was wrong because he wasn’t that type of guy.”

Mr Wood remembered the bloodied faces he saw and the fear he saw in miners’ faces – men who were otherwise used to facing the challenge of working in extremely harsh conditions.

“When I got home that day, I put the news on and I was expecting somebody had been killed at Orgreave. How somebody didn’t get killed, I don’t know.”

Another former miner recalled a mounted officer coaxing a fellow picket out of a gennel with the promise of safe passage only to then use a baton on his head.

Bruce Wilson, who worked at Silverwood pit at the time, had run into the gennel between terrace housing after mounted police – dubbed ‘the cavalry’ - charged pickets back into Orgreave village. A mounted officer then approached the men.

“He lent down and said three times to me and this lad, come out and you’ll be alright. Nowt’s going to happen, come on, we’re just clearing the way.

“And I said to this lad don’t go out there, don’t you trust ‘em. Third time he said it he went out this young lad. As soon as he got out in the open the cavalry man whacked him on top of the head with full force. This lad put his hands on top of his head, there was blood all over. He collapsed to the floor. I looked at the copper and went you ‘effin’ b’, there were no need for that.”