Orgreave: The Service Speaks

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The year 2024 will mark forty years since the Miners' Strike of 1984-5 which left a legacy of resentment and distrust towards the police in mining areas which endures to this day. The 'Battle of Orgreave', was captured by BBC cameras and involved confrontation between police from eighteen UK forces and some 5000 striking miners.All events of historic significance merit an oral history of those who participated. The human life span imposes a window of opportunity for the conduct and writing of such studies. The aftermath of such events may entail a long history of litigation and distress which may preclude candour. The Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster is an instance where an objective oral history is probably still impossible. The opening of the window of opportunity is determined by factors of litigation, research ethics and sensitivity. The closing of the window is determined by the death of those involved. A police officer new in the career in 1984 would now be in his or her late sixties, so the window of opportunity for an oral history of policing the miners' strike remains open for a few years yet.The proposed research will use narrative inquiry and visual methodology approaches capturing social representation processes such as feelings and images. It offers the potential to address ambiguity, complexity, and dynamism of individuals, groups, or organisational phenomena (Mitchell & Egudo 2003). This research will not seek to necessarily address the 'rights or wrongs' or the 'truth' of this contentious event in history, nor to formulate a scientific explanation, but rather to address the epistemological question of how we endow experience with meaning and reflection. The findings from the proposed study will contribute to current debates on the fortieth anniversary of this event by asking what factors were at play in the miners' strike to move officers towards or away from procedural justice. The findings from the proposed study will be of interest to scholars across a variety of disciplines, given the significance of this historic and exceptional industrial dispute. We think it will also move forward contemporary thinking on the concept of procedural justice in policing - which refers to the degree to which someone perceives people in authority to apply processes, or make decisions about them, in a fair and just way. Aside from capturing an important perspective of social history that has not yet been recorded, this research has the potential to investigate the experience of performing a public service and policing during a period of considerable civil unrest under a 'law and order' administration.