The Starmer government has finally announced the start of its bland inquiry into state violence during the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ coking plant during the 1980s miners’ strike.
The inquiry’s brief should be to identify those who should stand trial or at least face disgrace for sending heavily-armed police, and soldiers dressed as police, to viciously beat prosecute striking miners then prosecuted the victims. It should be shaming media bosses and ‘journalists’ who helped smear the victims. Like the BBC’s editing of footage to falsely portray miners as attacking first.
This photo was taken 36 years ago today just before the massed ranks of police attacked and brutalised the miners at Orgreave.
Later that day @BBCNews reversed their film to make it look to the whole nation like the miners attacked first.
Don’t ever forget that.#OrgreaveJustice pic.twitter.com/M7PaIdfyyA— Ian Prowse (@IanProwse) June 18, 2020
Instead, its job will be to “aid public understanding” — but not until 2028, almost four years after Starmer conned his way into government after promising a prompt inquiry into the police charge.
Orgreave — the war on miners
As the Thatcher regime continued its war on the miners and its cover-up of its own crimes, it tried to jail 95 miners but the trials collapsed. South Yorkshire Police were eventually forced to pay more than half a million in compensation and costs, a large sum at the time. But no police officer was ever disciplined, let alone prosecuted.
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign said the government had taken far too long to begin inquiry and paid tribute to its members’ tenacity in continuing to push for it. Anglican bishop of Sheffield Pete Wilcox, who will chair the inquiry, said he wanted to resolve the trauma of miners and their communities and would:
follow the evidence without prejudice, wherever it may lead, wholly independent of government, law enforcement or any other public body.
Anyone who has observed the contempt establishment creature Starmer and his hangers-on have shown to the Orgreave campaign for years will know that Wilcox will have another fight on his hands to keep that promise.
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, which has sought a statutory inquiry since forming in 2012, welcomed the announcement, although it said it was disappointed at the time taken to reach this formal start.
The campaign said its members, who include former striking miners, had needed “determination and tenacity”, supported by the wider labour and trade union movement. It said: “We have … tried our best to influence the process to ensure this does not become a police-led inquiry but one shaped by the miners and their experiences.”
The truth
Sarah Jones, the policing minister, said the panel’s purpose was to get to the truth about the Orgreave events. She said:
I’ve had the privilege of meeting the campaigners, and I think the overriding sense of injustice is obviously palpable, but also the sense that people just haven’t been believed or listened to for a very long time.
What is important to me is that people have the confidence to come forward, with whatever information we’re going to need, and to be able to tell their story of what happened in a way where they know that they will be listened to and believed.
South Yorkshire police said they were “fully committed to supporting the Orgreave inquiry”.
The four panel members are Wendy Williams, a former chief prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution Service and inspector in the police and fire service inspectorate; Mary Bousted, a former joint general secretary of the National Education Union; Joanna Gilmore, a senior lecturer in law at the University of York who specialises in public order, human rights and policing policy; and Angela Sutton-Vane, a historian with expertise in archiving and preserving police records.
Wilcox said:
I wish to help resolve a trauma that persists to this day — for the miners who were injured at Orgreave, who were arrested at Orgreave, who feel their story has not yet been fully told. For their families and communities, and for the relationship between police and the mining community.
I will follow the evidence without prejudice, wherever it may lead.
Featured image via the Canary
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