Orgreave and Hillsborough - the truth: new miners' inquiry holds answers for city of Liverpool, too
A decade ago, this newspaper exclusively revealed troubling links between South Yorkshire Police’s tactics during two of Britain’s darkest moments: Orgreave and the Hillsborough Disaster.
Having obtained an unredacted version of a previously censored watchdog report, The Yorkshire Post was able to highlight that the same senior officers and solicitor were involved in the aftermath of the state-led bloodshed at Orgreave and this country’s most devastating sporting disaster.
The Independent Police Complaints Committee dossier, seen at the time exclusively by our reporter, plainly revealed how police officers at both now infamous occasions were told to capture nothing in their notebooks and went on to perjure themselves at the 1984 miners’ trial. At the time, the then Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham told us: “As I’ve always said; we won’t have the truth about Hillsborough until we have the full truth about Orgreave.”
That investigation alone ought to have been evidence and motivation enough for then Prime Minister Theresa May to have triggered the pursuit of full disclosure – it wasn’t.
News, therefore, today that the now Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is committing to giving the miners the truth about what happened at Orgreave will offer hope not only to the men treated like vermin by police, but also to those Liverpudlian families who lost so many loved ones in Sheffield.
This newspaper has been unequivocal on this: had miners been held in higher esteem for their work and sacrifice in powering Britain; if what happened to them had been properly, honestly investigated and those responsible for ordering their trampling and bludgeoning held robustly to account, the loss of life at Hillsborough and the years of subsequent anguish, torment, lies and frustration could have been averted.