Yvette Cooper: IPCC paralysis over call for truth about Orgreave

Over many years, our communities and our neighbourhood police in Yorkshire have worked hard to rebuild trust and form a strong partnership. But we still need to know the truth about what happened that dreadful day three decades ago.

And it is a serious problem that the Government’s system for investigating these kinds of problems is so weak. Unless we have a system for swiftly investigating and sorting out problems between police and communities, good policing ends up being overshadowed and it isn’t just the miners of Orgreave who feel the injustice.

For the sake of our mining communities, but also for the sake of the police and public, we need an investigation into Orgreave and a much better system for getting to the truth and sorting problems fast.

The events at Orgreave were amongst the most troubling of the entire 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. Those who were there have distressing stories of violence. Those who weren’t saw the TV images of blooded faces, charging horses, of kicks and punches.

The aftermath threw up more questions than answers with the collapse of the attempted prosecution of 95 miners on riot charges, allegations that witness statements had been changed and the pay out by South Yorkshire Police of nearly half a million pounds to 39 miners who had sued for assault.

Eighteen months ago, a BBC documentary alleged that police officers were told what to write in their statements after the clashes. Then Government papers from the 1980s published in January revealed there had been attempts by the Government to influence police tactics – fuelling the longstanding fears that Government decisions had escalated the tensions around policing of the strike.

Faced with these sorts of allegations, both about Government’s role and the events at Orgreave itself, a serious investigation is needed. Yet none has happened.

South Yorkshire Police asked the Independent Police Complaints Commission to look into the allegations. I called on the IPCC to do an inquiry.

But since then we have had silence.

The IPCC haven’t even decided whether to investigate or not.

How on earth can it take them 18 months even to make up their minds whether to look into it or not?

This isn’t fair on the Orgreave miners, the local community or the police.

Repeatedly we have called on Ministers to reform or replace the IPCC because it just isn’t doing its job. Yet Home Secretary Theresa May has refused.

Two things are needed now. First, the IPCC need to get their act together and launch a proper investigation into the allegations.

If they won’t or can’t, then the Government should consider initiating a swift, independent review along the lines of the Ellison Review set up by the Home Office last year following allegations of corruption and use of undercover policing against the Lawrence family in the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.

Second, we also need wider reforms. The IPCC’s failure to deal with the referral over Orgreave shows why it needs to be replaced.

Though the current chair Anne Owers has made admirable progress in reform, the organisation does not have the confidence of victims, the police or the public. It is inevitably under pressure as a result of the scale of the Hillsborough investigation and does not have sufficient resources. But neither does it have sufficient power.

Labour would replace the IPCC with a tougher new Police Standards Authority, able to launch its own investigations swiftly without the need for referrals from police forces.

It must have stronger powers to investigate and be able to shed light into the currently obscure system of police misconduct, with public hearings for cases of serious misconduct, like with nursing, where people can be struck off.

Police officers across the country do great work with local communities – their bravery shouldn’t be overshadowed by the failure of the system to sort problems out when policing 
goes wrong.

Thirty years on from Orgreave, the IPCC and Ministers should not allow it to remain a running sore.

Unanswered questions about something so emotive are disruptive to everyone: to the vast majority of police officers working hard in their communities and who don’t want to be tarnished by the past; and to people wanting a process that gets to the truth for their families, friends and communities.

Yvette Cooper is the Shadow Home Secretary. She is also MP for Pontefract and Castleford.