A regional daily has demanded “total transparency” from the police amid calls for an inquiry into the miners’ strike confrontation known as the ‘Battle of Orgreave’.
The Yorkshire Post says South Yorkshire Police has its “work cut out” to win back the public’s trust after the newspaper exclusively revealed links between an alleged cover-up carried out by senior officers with the force at the time and its actions five years later during the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
Home Secretary Theresa May is facing calls to launch a new inquiry into the 1984 scandal, which saw 95 miners arrested at the Orgreave coking plant, near Rotherham, after clashes with police which left 50 people injured.
The fresh calls come after a jury found last month that force Ch Supt David Duckenfield was “responsible for manslaughter by gross negligence” due to a breach of his duty of care at Sheffield’s Hillsborough stadium in April 1989, where 96 Liverpool football supporters died.
A photo taken during the 1984 ‘Battle of Orgreave’
Last summer, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would “not be in the public interest” to launch a full investigation into claims police used excessive force against miners, had their statements manipulated and gave false evidence in court to justify spurious criminal charges.
But redacted sections of a watchdog’s report into clashes between police and striking miners reveal that the same senior officers and solicitor were involved both in the aftermath of Orgreave and of Britain’s worst sporting disaster in 1989.
Sections of the IPCC dossier, seen exclusively by the Post, reveal that these officials became aware South Yorkshire Police officers had perjured themselves at the miners’ trial in 1984, but kept this fact secret.
In an editorial on the revelations, the Post said the view that the force’s senior management structure was “not fit for purpose” had been reaffirmed.
The editorial reads: “It is a damning indictment which will be given greater credence by The Yorkshire Post’s revelations that the police’s reluctance to investigate the conduct of officers at the so-called Battle of Orgreave during the Miners’ Strike might have had a direct bearing on the policing arrangements at Hillsborough five years later and the subsequent miscarriage of justice.
Given the fact that not one MP stood up in the Commons to defend the force after its officers were accused of prolonging the agony of the Hillsborough families by blaming, erroneously, the behaviour of Liverpool fans for Britain’s worst ever sporting disaster, South Yorkshire Police still has its work cut out before it can win back the trust that has been betrayed.”
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The one day in my life when I felt ashamed to be English was when I witnessed the South Yorkshire Police Stormtroopers upholding law and order at Orgreave. If they’d had sabres I’m sure they wouldn’t have had any qualms about using them.
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No-one died at Orgreave and the case comes nowhere near Hillsborough for tragedy caused by stupidity and negligence. However, that hasn’t deterred the usual suspects from conflating the two for their own political ends. I was a reporter in Yorkshire at the time of the Miners’ Strike and covered dozens of court cases and protest marches. Believe me, there were just as many thuggish miners as there were thuggish police. To paint those miners now as angelic ‘victims’, no doubt with eyes on massive com-pen-say-shun payments, is not just dishonest. It is a cynical rewriting of history to suit leftish agendas.
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We should hope that press pix/film are vital evidence to establish whether police were heavy handed – or not.
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This would have been a more interesting story if the Yorkshire Post was demanding a whitewash over Orgreave.
Total transparency? What else would any newspaper demand….
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I, too, covered the miners’ strike, although I was too busy monitoring events in Notts to be able to witness what happened at Orgreave.
My point is this…it wasn’t just South Yorkshire police who were economical with the truth.
I covered a magistrates’ court case in Retford, in which three officers from the Met lied through their teeth to such an extent that the charges were thrown out. The bench couldn’t have done anything else, as each officer told a completely different tale in the witness box!
On another occasion,I was even arrested by a Sussex officer, who told a local Inspector I had “threatened” him. With my notebook, presumably!
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Onlooker, miners that lost their jobs, livelihoods and way of life are victims. Miners that were on the end of beatings are also victims. Miners do not need to be “angelic” to be victims! The scenes at Orgreave looking at pictures seemed to be reminiscent of Peterloo without the sabres!
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No one died at Orgreave thank goodness, but I am so against wasting time going back over things years later to make a political point. I was delighted that the families learned what happened at Hillsborough but I was born in the coalfields in Nottinghamshire and it was a bitter dispute across families and communities which is best left in the past. Stop trying to re-write history and focussed on stories that are challenging people right now.
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