"The Battle of Orgreave" - Radical Film Series

The desire to finally live history and no longer merely consume it has been too long repressed.
"How long does the battle last?" I asked. "It starts at 12.30 and ends at 3.30, but there's an interval for lunch at 1.30," replied the woman with the Coal Not Dole badge. We all laughed nervously.' (Guardian, 21/6/01.)
A pathetic parody of this repressed desire was recently played out on the 15th anniversary of perhaps the bloodiest picket line conflict of the Miners Strike; the Battle of Orgreave was re-enacted near to the original site. Filmed for Channel 4 TV by a Hollywood director, and with ex-pickets and cops from the original battle as extras (but 'real' actors playing the 'heroes' of the event such as Arthur Scargill - typically bourgeois history as the history of leaders), the event was painstakingly reconstructed from media footage of the time. As always, once the event is safely far enough in the past, the media that acted in its own class interests by lying and distorting the truth in the real time of the class struggle, feels confident enough to now reveal a somewhat more truthful version of events; now that it no longer has any consequences. This is a sure sign of the ruling class's confidence that these are dead issues, definitively resolved in their favour. They want us to believe that class struggle is a thing of the past. Again, the colonisation process at work; get the defeated to dramatise their defeat as entertainment for the victors. Despite a bit of temporary flattering attention and extra pocket money for the locals, who really gains from this farce? No one but the ruling class and their media. The claims that the event was therapeutic (or "healing") for some are predictable - but what does it help them come to terms with? Only the acceptance of their defeat and all its consequences since.