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Remembering the injustice of Orgreave
PETER LAZENBY previews this weekend’s commemorative event to mark one of the darkest episodes of the 1984-5 miners’ strike

A MASS picnic and festival will take place this weekend to mark the 30th anniversary of one of the 20th century’s most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens — the so-called battle of Orgreave.

On June 18 1984, thousands of miners gathered to picket Orgreave cokeworks near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, a little over three months after the start of the miners’ strike against pit closures.

Police directed pickets to an area of land which left them hemmed in on three sides.

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