h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The “Battle of Orgreave” and the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike - A48711594
Author: Pinniped - U183682


Well, here's Orgreave yet again, greatly toned-down and far better behaved. There are no confusing italics either.
The story is just too important IMO to be excluded from the Edited Guide. I hope this version won't be considered too emasculated or too ordinary. I hope even more that it's not still deemed too contentious.
You'll all understand why there are no links and only sparse headers as yet. I need some indication of acceptability before putting more work in.

Pin, thank you for bringing this back using the House Style. As you say, it is far too important for the Guide not to include it.

Please consider putting your other version into either or Underguide

I miss the personal accounts, but you've described it admirably.

I'd mention that the fatality in Wales was the taxi driver rather than the working miner.

Icy

A monumental piece of work Pin Version 2 reads just as effectively, but far more dispassionately than the original.

This is an EG-must

Thanks both.

(Corrected, Icy)

Thanks h5r too!

A brilliant re-write Pin, well done.

Still a great piece Pin ~ the power of the subject and your research guarantee it.

I see Orgreave is on Google Street View. It's interesting to see the topography of the battlefield having read this account. Here's the view from the railway bridge on Highfield Lane:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=highfield+lane+orgreave&sll=53.362077,-1.352777&sspn=0.013061,0.038452&ie=UTF8&ll=53.377031,-1.373463&spn=0.026113,0.076904&z=14&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=53.377177,-1.373437&panoid=xen3onGAQzGTl1yREGEB3w&cbp=12,211.67385605289402,,0,13.136160714285702

Yep. If I remember, the house on the right hand side of the road that shows as a white strip (in line with a projection of the left-hand kerb on the bridge) is No.31, outside which the final police cordon was drawn.

That's where Stan's mother watched through the bedroom curtains in the original version. It's also the only stretch of the entire scene that still looks much as it did in 1984.

Yes, that's 31 - I zoomed up and had a shufti at it. Their hanging baskets need replanting, but I like the St George wheelie bin.

I think that I missed reading the original so I can’t really compare, but for me this version really engaged my attention all the way through.

The background history to these events was important and I think that you’ve done a great job on illustrating the strife of the times while bringing these particular events to life. I also think that you’ve done the main protagonists justice with an even hand.

Well done. A great read.

Deke

Hello there Pinniped/all,

We really appreciate your efforts to rewrite this and think it's looking really good.

In order to keep within BBC policy guidelines we will have to make a few suggestions.

First of all, where events are stated to have happened, we need good supporting links - for example, this is a good link to the Lesley Boulton story which makes it clear that the story is substantiated: http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2009/03/02/lesley_boulton_orgreave_photo_feature.shtml)> Similar links should be provided for the David Bell/car bonnet incidents.

Also, we should offer balance by also providing editorial links with an alternative point of view and to explain the stories behind them too (e.g. miners who were unhappy about there being no strike ballot and didn't strike). This doesn't have to be a lengthy diversion - but as this is such a politically fraught story it's important that we have this as balance.

Once again, thanks very much for taking the time to do this. We agree with the many contributors to this thread; it's an excellent piece of work.

h2g2 Editors

Dear Editors

I have counted to a hundred, decided that leaving hootoo over this would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, duly recorded your graduation to Full Charlotte Status and devised this reply.

I would be prepared to put in the effort to substantiate the remaining statements about Bell's injuries and the car bonnet incident, but I think would only be worth doing so given certain understandings.

If I'm going to the trouble of providing incontestible truth, I would like to provide a similar level of verification of facts excised from this version, plus a few not included in the original. I would then expect you to publish a substantiated and expanded version of the original Entry, conditional only on the approval of my peers in this forum. I would also like to point out that the substantiating evidence would not necessarily be on the web. I would draw it from contemporary press reports, including the copy of BBC journalists, from subsequent writings of these and other BBC employees and of course from the judicial record.

In addition to restoring as much of the original as I can prove, I would also like to investigate the BBC's own role in the reporting of Orgreave, and in particularly the Corporation's admission and apology of 1991 concerning the misrepresentation of the sequence of events in edited and broadcast footage. I would also like to consult Tony Benn's writings on this subject, and specifically the allegation that BBC journalists protested to management before the material was broadcast, and were overruled. I hope and trust that you would let me include all this too, provided I can substantiate it and the community deems it relevant.

I have also posted you a copy of a book recently published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, entitled 'Shafted: the Media, the Miners' Strike and the Aftermath'. Please accept it as my gift but also a token of my hope that you will read it and consider its message, and in particular its revelations of journalistic complicity in the disturbing activities of a number of authorities.

I must also say that I consider your comments about balance to be themselves unbalanced. There were indeed miners who wanted a ballot, and some of them did not strike, and some others returned to work early. I think this is all well enough covered already, though. I think you would do well to contemplate whether joining a strike or accepting a pay off was a fair choice to put to thousands of families who were already condemned to lose their livelihoods.

I am not a political activist, but I am a Sheffielder. We were all touched by this, and still are. So were very many communities in large parts of England, Wales and Scotland. You need to understand that I, and surely many others, find your aloofness from all of this to be quite insulting, as well as a complete dereliction of your presumed calling of investigators after truth.

In conclusion, let me say I'm surprised that you're demanding standards of journalistic precision in this particular Entry that are far in advance of anything I've heard of before in h2g2's Edited Guide. Would you perhaps consider going the whole hog, and offering me a commission? I think you would find me exceptionally good value (free except for the requirement of a small honorarium to an appropriate charity).

Yours etc

Pinniped

I have to back Pinniped on this one, Eds. I've read other accounts of this conflict, read Benn's diaries and watched the recent BBC4 documentary. I consider all his versions of this entry to be scrupulously fair.

I suggest we all take a contemplative break and then decide how to progress this one.

Hello Pinniped/Icy,

Thank you for these points.

We weren't questioning the 'fairness' of this Entry - we are a user-generated content site and if we publish content about politically-sensitive issues we have to provide supportive links, or put the site at risk. An article on carrots, for example, or a more distant historical event, doesn't carry with it the same potential repercussions if we don't mention all points of view. I would like to stress that we don't ourselves have any political agenda and we too have read the Benn diaries.

As we have said, it's not the same as publishing an article on BBC News, where they have regular consultation with editorial and legal teams in order to ensure that they are within BBC Guidelines. The article already exists on the site and we're not asking you to alter that, but we have a special responsibility for what appears in the Edited Guide.

Nonetheless, as we think this is a fine piece of work which we do want to take into the Guide, we consulted Editorial Policy to try to make this happen. They've had a look at it and they made those suggestions, which we are duty-bound to follow up.

Kind regards,

h2g2 Feedback

OK, I've calmed down a bit now. I was in a bit of a loop back there. I still occasionally get these black bouts of acute depression and become convinced I'm talking to Jimster.

It's the "alternative point of view" bit I really object to, I guess. I think anyone who finds this piece unbalanced must either have extreme political views or spectacular ignorance of what was at stake in the Miners' Strike. The former is at least a reasoned position. People who can't imagine the dilemma of the miners in 1984 simply didn't ought to be in journalism.

Anyway, it's very helpful to know that Editorial Policy have pronounced on this. You'll be pleased to hear that I've applied my legendary powers of diplomacy in the direction of Room 4225, and I'm very confident that their Resultant Enlightenment will mean the End of All Your Problems. You don't need to thank me. Just give me a shout in the unlikely event that they give you guys any more trouble. And if they haven't forwarded your book in, say, six weeks time, then let me know and I'll send another one.

Hi Pinniped

This is rather a long Entry

A few nitpicks I thought I'd mention are:

First the title should have single quotation marks rather than double

<> 100th

Perhaps you should put NUM in brackets and what it stands for before it in full

Noted Opti, and thanks.
I'll wait on further advice on the prospects before making alterations, if that's OK.

found any more advice on the prospects yet?