‘Blood was pouring out of the back of my leg’: Former Wearside miner shares ‘terrifying’ Orgreave experience

A former miner has re-lived his Battle of Orgreave memories - of a day when he was left with blood pouring from a leg wound.

The Orgreave Inquiry is holding a listening event at Redhills Durham Miners Hall today, Thursday, November 12, as it investigates the events of June 18, 1984.

Thousands of miners and police were at the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire that day, with clashes leaving many injured. A total of 95 miners were arrested, but proceedings against them later collapsed.

One of the North-East men who was there was father-of-three Bob Heron who described the events as ‘terrifying’.

Bob was planning to be at today’s Redhills event where he hoped to tell his version of events.

In the meantime, he shared them with the Sunderland Echo and said: “It has been covered up for 40-plus years. I would like to see something done with the people who organised it all. They are the people who gave carte blanche to go in and do whatever they wanted.”

Bob was 36 in 1984 and still vividly remembers the events that unfolded. He said there were police road blocks which directed him and other people to a specific area.

“All the police had crash helmets, shields, batons. They came out with shields to grab the ones who were straggling behind.”

Bob and others began looking for other men from the North East and said: “I got to a field and there were police there with dogs.”

He said he ran to another area where there was ‘another big line of dogs. I realised we were hemmed in.”

Some time after that, he realised that a police dog was pulling at his trousers.

“I fell down and, to my horror, the dog grabbed me for a second time. It grabbed the back of my leg and shook me a few times. I managed to kick it off.”

Bob got up but then an officer told him ‘look at the back of your leg’.

“There was blood pouring out of the back of my leg. I only ran about 10-12 yards when my shoe was filled with blood.”

Bob was told where he could find some ambulances and said: “There were police officers posted all the way there.”

Bob was taken to hospital where he needed numerous stitches as there were ‘bite marks on both sides of my leg.”

He then had to hitch a ride back to the North East with some men from Westoe, having never caught up with his own colleagues.

Bob also remembered: “There were police who were fully armed up and on horses. It was terrifying. You could hear the thunder of the hooves.”

Back in 1984, Bob was on strike and battling to save his local pit at Eppleton alongside 1,000 colleagues. He spent 1984 on the picket lines while his wife Juliana was 'at home with the kids who were 4, 11 and 15'.

He remembered days where he would picket for hours and then head to the pit heap to 'riddle' the waste for any coal he could get out of it for the family fire.

"I would bring that back home and that would be the fire until it just about run out. Then I would be back up on the heap again."

Picketing duties took him to Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Manchester, west of Durham and opencast sites in Northumberland - often for eight hours or more.

'It wasn't a lovely time. It was quite horrendous at times," he told the Echo in an interview in 2024.