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Paper short abstract:

The cokery of Orgreave, a few miles from Sheffield, was the scene of one of the harshest clashes between miners and police during the 1984-85 strike. After the closing of the colliery, a redevelopment plan is trying to cancel the traces of the past events, but not without opposition.

Paper long abstract:

The plain surrounding the cokery of Orgreave, a few miles from Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, was the scene of one of the harshest clashes between miners and police during the year-long 1984-85 strike against Margaret Thatcher's plans to shut down dozens of coal mines across the country to rationalise the industry.

During the so-called "battle of Orgreave", mounted police corps charged the picketing miners, causing a violent confrontation that ended with 123 wounded and 71 miners charged with the accusation of riot, a crime punishable by life imprisonment. When the miners were released after the judges deemed "unreliable" the evidence provided by the police, many asked the government to open an enquiry on the police's behaviour during the episode, a request still unheeded after nearly forty years.

The Orgreave cokery closed in 1990, and a redevelopment plan, still partly in the making, was proposed for the area. In a region dotted by post-industrial ruins, the plan is marked by its intention to erase every trace of past events, even to the point of changing the name of the location. The attempt to cancel one of the most traumatic events in the collective memory of the mining communities, that saw it as the tangible proof of the hate of Margaret Thatcher for organised labour, has though met fierce opposition, transforming the area in a space of contention. Decades after the strike, the past events still haunt the old cokery site, symbolising the unhealed scar represented by the strike.