Two years on, watchdog reaches decision over Orgreave inquiry

The police watchdog has reached a decision on whether to launch a full investigation into the actions of South Yorkshire’s officers at the infamous 1984 ‘Battle of Orgreave’ nearly two years after the case was referred to it.
Miners Strike 1984
Orgreave Coking Plant
Police with riot gear move pickets - 18 June 1984Miners Strike 1984
Orgreave Coking Plant
Police with riot gear move pickets - 18 June 1984
Miners Strike 1984 Orgreave Coking Plant Police with riot gear move pickets - 18 June 1984

The Independent Police Complaints Commission says its officials are in the process of drafting a report outlining whether something similar to its wide-ranging probe into the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy should be carried out.

South Yorkshire Police referred itself to the watchdog in November 2012 after a BBC documentary claimed officers may have colluded in writing court statements which saw 95 striking miners wrongly charged.

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Since then officials have been going through thousands of documents to establish whether the case met the criteria for “exceptional circumstances” that would justify a full investigation into a historic matter.

The IPCC, which faces anger over the amount of time it has taken to deal with the referral, would not say what decision they had come to or when it would be made public.

It has also emerged that Cindy Butts, the IPCC commissioner for Yorkshire’s four police forces, who has overseen the preliminary ‘scoping exercise’, has now left her role in the region for a role scrutinising the police in London and southern England.

A spokesman said Ms Butts, a native Londoner who moved to her new role in the capital last month, would retain “a number of Yorkshire cases that are coming to an end so there is some continuity in the handover”.

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She will be replaced as commissioner for Yorkshire’s four forces by Kathryn Stone, who became an IPCC commissioner this summer and was previously Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland.

According to the IPCC, the changes are part of its expansion programme which will see its budget increased by more than 50 per cent this financial year so it can “deal with more serious and sensitive allegations against the police”.

It said in a statement: “We are taking on more staff, including investigators and commissioners so that we can take on more investigations, which is what the public wants us to do.

“We also have a new chief executive and a new chief operating officer and have opened an office in Birmingham. Our expansion was announced by the Home Secretary in February 2013.”

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Members of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign are planning a demonstration outside the IPCC’s headquarters in central London on November 14 to mark the two years since the scoping exercise was first started.

Group secretary Barbara Jackson said the protest would go ahead whatever the decision. She said: “We still need to make our feelings known. There are a lot of us who feel that if the IPCC investigate it will strengthen the call for a full public inquiry.”

During the bloody clash at Orgreave in June 1984, police officers on horseback and on foot were filmed beating picketing miners with truncheons.

South Yorkshire Police claimed the miners attacked them first, and prosecuted 95 men for riot and unlawful assembly, which carried potential life sentences.

All 95 were acquitted after the prosecution case collapsed following revelations in court that showed their evidence may have been unreliable.