How Just One Man Destroyed British Mining in 1984

Click to reserve a copy of our book: → mettlehistory.co.uk ← Remembering the Britain that made things. ——— It is the morning of June 18th, 1984. On a field in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, five thousand coal miners are facing six thousand police officers. On horseback. With riot shields. With batons never before used on British streets. Before this dispute is over, six men will be dead. Thousands will be injured. Eleven thousand will be arrested. This is what happens when an industry that powered two world wars — that heated every home and ran every factory in Britain for centuries — is told: you are finished. The Battle of Orgreave will go down in history as the closest Great Britain has come to a civil war since the General Strike of 1926, when one and a half million workers brought the country to a standstill. History has a simple villain for this story. His name is Arthur Scargill — President of the miners' union, and the man who drove his members into a brutal war against the British government. But what nobody knew at the time is that behind Scargill, there is a government hiding secrets, a police force fabricating evidence, and a document nobody was supposed to find. ——— Watch the full series:    • Britain's Industrial Villains: The Men Who...   Disclaimer: This video is a researched history documentary. The script and story are based on real events and verified sources to the best of our ability. Some visuals are AI generated and used only as illustrative context when authentic archival photos are limited, they are not presented as real photographs of the exact people or locations unless stated. Any archival images or footage shown belong to their respective owners and are used in a transformative way for commentary, education, criticism, and historical analysis under Fair Use.