WHEN police launched their brutal and well-planned attack on striking miners at Orgreave on June 18 1984, Hilary Cave was one of the few women present.

Now 76, Cave was a staff member at the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Sheffield in South Yorkshire during the 1984-5 miners’ strike against pit closures.

She joined the staff in May 1983, a year before the strike began, working as the union’s national education officer, running courses in the semi-autonomous regional areas which made up the NUM.

She worked with NUM general secretary the late Peter Heathfield and president Arthur Scargill.

She produced the union’s campaign pamphlet, The Case for Coal, arguing against pit closures and for development of cleaner ways to burn coal.

When the strike started her job changed.

“I organised some of the rallies,” she says. “I organised the one outside Sheffield City Hall where the union’s national executive committee made the strike official.

“I liaised with support groups, tried to help them. Peter Heathfield oversaw my work — a lovely person.”

She should have been at work in the NUM offices on June 18, the day the police attacked striking miners at Orgreave, a coking plant in South Yorkshire which was supplying fuel essential for the steel industry, and which was being picketed. 

Instead she took the day off to go there.

“I knew there was something being planned,” she tells the Morning Star. “Some of the men on the staff were being called into meetings. It was considered men’s business. I was never told.”

She was used to working in male-dominated environments. One of her earlier jobs had been with the Workers Educational Association, including running courses at an ironworks — another male-dominated industry.

“There was some kind of deployment being planned. But it can’t have been that secret because letters went out to all the areas telling them to send men in large numbers. I knew it was going to be important.

“On June 18 I took a day’s official leave. I got a lift on a bus carrying miners from Scotland. They detoured into Sheffield to pick me up.”

As the bus approached the Orgreave site, it was stopped by police and told to park, leaving Cave and the Scottish miners with a walk to the site of the plant.

“I heard one of the miners say it meant they couldn’t get to where they had been deployed.

“The police were actually deploying as well. That was becoming clear to me as the day went on,” she says.

“We walked the rest of the way. I remember we went into a field. There were lots of people. Then I remember I saw a man with a bloodied head. I saw a lot more bloodied heads that day. In fact literally in all my life I have never seen as much blood as I saw that day.

“We were on the right of the field and I saw a man propped up against a wall mopping his head and saying ‘this is class war.’ He was a middle-aged man — not a young firebrand.

“I looked down the field and there were rows and rows of police with long shields.

“Arthur and Jim Parker [Scargill’s driver] came to me and asked how it was going. I said OK.

“There was the occasional stone being thrown. Arthur said loudly that he didn’t want to see any stone-throwing. So the stories later about hails of stones being thrown were complete lies.

“The police were coming forward with their shields and we just kept retreating. I was still with the group of Scottish miners. I said why are we retreating? And so we just stood still. 

“The police wouldn’t let us get away with that. The police line parted and the horses came galloping through. They had long truncheons and they were drawn, they had body armour and shields. All you could do was run.

“It wasn’t a battle. A battle requires both sides to be armed. There was only one side that was armed and it was the police — batons, horses. It wasn’t a battle. It was an assault. There were lads with head wounds. That was what we kept seeing all around us.

“The horses charged. All you could do was run, so we kept running. We knew what they would do if they caught us. They would truncheon us.”

Miners were running into the nearby community, chased by mounted police who were lashing out at fleeing miners. 

Cave and the Scottish miners ran through a gap between two rows of terraced houses, then round the back. 

“Residents were standing and talking. There was one door open. The men were yelling at me to go in. I suppose they were trying to protect me as best they could. I went in but a woman said ‘what are you doing in my house?’ so I went back out.

“The police charge had gone past. There were fields at the back of the houses. I saw men running and horses chasing. They were clubbing the men down. I saw one man go down. He got up and climbed a wall near us.

“Then what I know now to be snatch squads came after us. They were absolutely dying to have a go at us. One was slapping his truncheon against his palm. There were residents out at the back of the houses. They couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Cave and the miners made their way round the side of the houses.

“The police horses seemed to have stopped,” says Cave. “For some reason they let us through. It was scary.”

She says the field was like a battlefield.

“There was a place where there’d been a fire. The miners had had to use whatever was to hand to defend themselves.

“Eventually we left and the bus dropped me back at the office. I decided to go into the control room.

“There were no mobile phones then. They didn’t know what was happening. Arthur rang. I think he rang from his hospital bed. He said one of our men was on life support. That was on TV very briefly but then they withdrew it.

“We knew lots of miners had been injured and arrested. They were appearing in court in Rotherham the next day. I was sent with bags full of cash to give them money if they were released so they could get home.

“I was stopping injured men in the street. I gave them money.

“I had a car and ran some to the station. I told a couple of them they could stay at my home, Craig Waddington and Eric Newbiggin. Eric was badly injured in several places. 

“I took them to the office for a drink to recover first. I was worried about Eric. Nurses had told police he was too badly injured to be put in a cell but the police ignored it. The nurses had stitched his knuckles, stitched his elbow, stitched a head wound.

“When we eventually got to my house, Craig had to help Eric upstairs for a shower. He called me to look at Eric’s back. He had a long bruise the shape of a police truncheon. The head wound was on the back of his head. He’d been attacked from behind. I got him to a sympathetic doctor. 

“Then I fed them and gave them my bed.

“The next day I took them to the office. We wanted to get them photographed.”

Ninety-five miners arrested at Orgreave were charged with riot or unlawful assembly, depending on which part of the battlefield they had been on. Riot carried a potential life sentence.

Cave followed the progress of the cases for 12 months after until they eventually came before the courts and the charges were dropped after clear evidence of collusion in making statements, some of which were dictated by senior officers. 

The plan was exposed in court by Michael Mansfield, then QC.

“I’d call it perjury,” she says. “I read the transcripts from the court. They were laughable.”

No police officers have ever been charged or even disciplined for the assaults at Orgreave.

Cave is still politically active. She says the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign is vital.

“Orgreave is a running sore. No democratic society should allow this to happen. There must be an impartial inquiry into what happened. It was not a battle. It was an attack on working people and it was terrifying. The inquiry should expose what happened so that they can get some form of redress.”

For more information about the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign visit otjc.org.uk.