A cop who clashed with miners at the 1984 Battle Of Orgreave has revealed how the police tactic was to disable people by aiming for their arms and legs.
Tony Munday also told of a senior officer dictating what to write in his statement in the immediate aftermath of violence which came at the height of the miners’ strike.
He is speaking out as new footage appears to show police brutality, with striking miners’ heads left heavily bleeding after being hit with truncheons.
Some of the miners who were attacked are speaking publicly for the first time in 40 years as part of a new three-part Channel 4 documentary, Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain.
Mr Munday, who served for 34 years with Hertfordshire Police, was among officers from 18 difference forces across the country called in to deal with picketing miners outside the British Steel coking plant in Orgreave, near Rotherham, on June 18 1984.
Newly released footage shows injured miners with blood pouring from their heads after clashes with police in the ‘Battle Of Orgreave’ on June 18 1984
Some 123 people were injured in the confrontations near a British Steel coking plant in South Yorkshire at the height of the miners’ strike
The newly revealed scenes are shown in an upcoming Channel 4 documentary series
Some 123 people were injured in violent clashes between police and picketers in the so-called ‘Battle Of Orgreave’ outside a British Steel coking plant near Rotherham on June 17 1984
Tony Munday, one of the officers on duty that day, has told a new Channel 4 documentary how the police tactic was to ‘disable’ people by aiming at their arms and legs
He recalled the approach they were ordered to take by senior figures, with the approved tactic being ‘to disable people’.
Mr Munday, now 70 and from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, told the programme: ‘So it’d be the legs or the arms or in extreme circumstances the torso.’
He insisted: ‘You’d never aim for the head.’
But the newly released footage shows miners bleeding profusely, amid allegations police battered them on their heads with truncheons.
The clips were filmed by Keith Brookes and Martin Harvey, of the National Union of Mineworkers, who were much closer to the clashes than TV news crews more distantly positioned behind police lines.
Some 71 picketers were charged under the Riot Act and 24 with violent disorder, but all charges were dropped when police evidence was deemed ‘unreliable’.
Now Mr Munday has told how a cover-up began almost instantly.
He told the Channel 4 documentary: ‘At Orgreave, the arresting officers were directed to write out statements.
‘The senior South Yorkshire detective comes in, he says, “Right, everyone, I’m going to dictate what I want you to, how to start your statements.”
National Union of Mineworkers officials filming the clashes witnessed injuries after getting closer to the clashes than TV crews stationed behind police lines
Mounted police charged pickets at the so-called ‘Battle Of Orgreave’ in the South Yorkshire village on June 18 1984
Miners told of being truncheoned by officers who they accused of sparking the violence
‘But this isn’t a request, this is an instruction, this is an order.
‘So he then dictated probably a paragraph, two paragraphs, and essentially they were the components of the offence of riot – in fear and expectation of violence for example.
‘And I thought, well, this is really bizarre – throughout my police career I always told the truth.’
The clashes broke out between 10,000 policemen and 5,000 picketing miners, with interventions by mounted police leading to 123 injuries.
Police claimed self-defence, but miners accused them of starting the violence.
Gareth Pierce, solicitor for many of the arrested picketers, said: ‘Within minutes of virtually every police witness entering the witness box, each one had committed perjury.
‘And one police witness after another just exploded. It was the police who were the aggressors in an extraordinary way.’
Arthur Critchlow, Stef Wysocki and Ernie Barber were among the miners charged with offences before being acquitted and have now told of the damaging fall-out.
Mr Critchlow remembered kneeling down to help an injured miner lying on the floor then feeling ‘a really big thud on the back of my head’.
Almost 100 picketers were arrested during the carnage but all charges were later dropped
Arthur Critchlow, a former miner, was one of 95 people charged with offences following the Orgreave clashes only for all cases to collapse amid doubts about police evidence
About 10,000 officers from 18 police forces across the country were called into action
A twisted sign, fallen concrete posts and a broken wall show just some of the damage left after a day of violence outside a coking plant in Orgreave
Stef Wysocki and Arthur Critchlow were two miners arrested at the ‘Battle Of Orgeave’
He added: ‘Fractured skull – dragged up by my arms, my head was absolutely pounding.
‘By the time we got to the holding area, the blood had gone down my back, down my legs and into my socks.
‘Miners by nature are physically strong – as wrong as it is to be beaten, let’s say you can take that.
‘What you can’t take is the aftermath and the charges and how they’re worded, how it’s set – that for me is the worst thing.’
Ms Pierce said: ‘He had been truncheoned and was very clearly passing in and out of consciousness.
‘You know, this is like captured prisoners of war, but where has the war come from?’
Meanwhile, Mr Wysocki recalled: ‘I don’t know where police come from, they both grabbed hold of me – “You’re under arrest.”
‘I says, “What for?” He says, “Throwing stones at police”. I said, “Look at my hands, they’re clean”, I said – “I’ve done nowt”.
I got down to the police cordon where shields were where they’re all interlocked and they bounced me off of shields and I were punched, kneed, kicked.
‘I got fists and knees coming at me all over. I more or less walked into the police line and they more or less carried me out.
‘I’d come from my home to go picketing, to be locked up, beaten up and then charged with a 25-year sentence – didn’t go down very well at all. Got a family, I were married. It were really frightening. How has it come to this?’
Mr Munday told Mail Online today how he had joined a line of police officers linking arms and facing a crowd of picketers, while colleagues on horses were alongside and others with shields and batons behind.
He intercepted a man who tried to run through the police lines, with both falling to the floor before he arrested the suspect for obstructing a police officer.
Mr Munday was taken aback when later filling out his report alongside colleagues in what he described as being like a schoolroom – and being told what to write.
There were 10,000 police officers facing 5,000 picketers outside the Orgreave plant
Miners have accused police of battering their heads though former cop Tony Munday said the tactic was to target arms and legs instead
Police in riot gear are seen escorting picketers away from their position near the coking plant
He told Mail Online: ‘A person in plain clothes introduced himself as a senior South Yorkshire Police officer who told us, “Stop writing – tear up what you’ve written. You need to put these few paragraphs at the top of your statements.”
‘Me and some other people said, that’s not the way statements are done, but he used words to the effect that this wasn’t a request, it was an order.
‘The paragraphs he gave us I recognised as setting out offences under the Riot Act whereas I’d just arrested my man for obstructing the police.
‘When the cases were thrown out because the judge found the police evidence unrealiable, I thought that’ll be to do with the fact the statements were dictated.
‘I fully expected there would be follow-up investigations into police misconduct, perjury, perverting the course of justice – but nothing has happened for 40 years.
‘Justice delayed is justice denied and there are questions still to be answered about what happened that day and why.
‘To be charged with riot offences which can carry up to life sentences, and for crown court cases to be stopped because the police evidence was unreliable – that’s very serious.’
The late Queen was left ‘horrified’ by the Battle Of Orgreave and described the violent clashes as ‘awful’, an ex-editor of the Times revealed last August.
South Yorkshire Police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 striking miners in 1992 for wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution in relation to the Battle Of Orgreave.
South Yorkshire Police referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2012 following allegations in a BBC documentary that some officers might have colluded in writing court statements.
But the IPCC said in March 2015 it had not found any ‘direct evidence’ senior officers within the force colluded to instruct colleagues to commit perjury and announced it would not hold a new investigation into claims police used ‘excessive force’.
The commission then decided not to publish its full, unredacted report into Orgreave because it could have interfered with what was still an ongoing investigation into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
The Yorkshire Post reported the following year it had seen redacted sections of the report revealing the same senior officers and solicitor were involved in the aftermath of Orgreave and the Hillsborough disaster which led to 97 football fans’ deaths.
There have been calls for a public inquiry into the police actions that day but the idea was rejected by then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd in September 2016
Running battles continued between police and picketers through surrounding streets
Riot squad police are pictured watching as pickets face them against a backdrop of burning cars at the Orgreave coke works near Rotherham in South Yorkshire on June 18 1984
In response to the new claims made in the forthcoming Channel 4 series, South Yorkshire Police said it ‘recognises public concern about the events at Orgreave’.
The force added: ‘It would not be appropriate for the South Yorkshire Police of today to Seek to explain or defend the actions of the force in 1984 as very few, if any, of those present remain here today and the documentation we hold Has not been assessed.
‘We believe the appropriate process to determine exactly what occurred and why, would be an independent and objective assessment of these materials and any others available at the time.’
Theresa May, when home secretary, suggested a public inquiry into Orgreave could be held but the idea was scrapped in September 2016 by successor Amber Rudd.