Battle of Orgreave: Labour election victory could at last lead to a full investigation

Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary until Parliament was dissolved ahead of the election, said “a proper investigation or inquiry” is needed to get to the truth.

The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign has been pushing for an inquiry since being formed 12 years ago and previously had its hopes dashed in 2016 by then Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

Campaign secretary Kate Flannery said it was imperative an inquiry was held as soon as possible given the passage of time.

“We’re more than happy to discuss with whoever’s in power how that inquiry would be run and formed.

“We’d like this to be happening within the life time of the miners, a lot of whom are very ill and a lot of them are dying.”

Ms Rudd previously told the House of Commons she had concluded there wasn’t a sufficient basis for either a statutory inquiry or an independent review.

Despite the violence and subsequent collapse of prosecutions over unreliable police evidence, she said that as there had been no deaths or wrongful convictions and policing had changed significantly over the previous 30 years an inquiry wasn’t necessary.

But Ms Cooper said: “40 years on, mining communities have still never had the truth about what happened that day at Orgreave. I know from the work I did as Home Affairs Select Committee chair that there are scores of boxes full of unpublished documents held by different police forces but they have never been investigated.”

The MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford in the last Parliament added: “With so many grave questions still unanswered, we need a proper investigation or inquiry to get to the truth.

“As well as the violence on the day, miners and their families faced the trauma of prosecutions being launched against them, even though the police evidence against them was so unreliable the trials quickly collapsed. Truth and justice are important both for the families most affected and across our coalfield communities.”

Ms Flannery said: “I think it’s about getting the true narrative of what happened actually at Orgreave and throughout the strike. To get that place finally in the public domain so that people will have some full understanding of what the strike was about and what the government and police were prepared to do.”

South Yorkshire Police was asked whether it regretted what happened at Orgreave, including the collapse of prosecutions, whether it would apologise and whether it supported an independent inquiry.

In response, the force issued a statement which said: “It would not be appropriate for the South Yorkshire Police of today to seek to explain or defend the actions of the force in 1984 as everyone involved in policing the miners’ strike has long since retired and the information we hold has not been properly assessed.”

The force added that it was continuing to catalogue 1,474 files it says it holds relating to the policing of the miners’ strike, including Orgreave, with a view to making the documents available in a public archive.