Theresa May ally calls for Orgreave investigation

Nick Timothy, who worked for Theresa May as her chief of staff until 2015, has said an investigation into Orgreave is the only way of curbing future police malpractice.

He wrote on the influential Conservative Home website this morning that the Home Secretary should not shy away from confronting the violence between police and miners in South Yorkshire in June 1984.

“Of course, some people will argue that as we are talking about events that took place more than thirty years ago, we should let sleeping dogs lie. But the Hillsborough Independent Panel inquiry showed that sleeping dogs in South Yorkshire Police lied, lied and lied again, not just about their own conduct but about the victims and other football supporters.

“If we want to prevent that from happening in future, if we want to make sure the police are above corruption, collusion and cover-ups, we need to know when and how these things have been allowed to happen in the past. And to know that, we need to investigate cases like Orgreave just the same as we need to look at cases like Hillsborough, Daniel Morgan and Stephen Lawrence,” said Mr Timothy, now Director of the New Schools network.

However he wants to steer clear of using Orgreave to target the Thatcher Government and the wider choices made to tackle the strikes of the 1980s.

He said getting to the “bottom of what happened at Orgreave” should not “undermine or repudiate ministers” of the day.

He said: “The economy needed to be reformed, the unions needed to be faced down, and unprofitable pits needed to be closed. But if the police pre-planned a mass, unlawful assault on the miners at Orgreave, and then sought to cover up what they did and arrest people on trumped-up charges, we need to know.

“Because getting to the bottom of cases like Orgreave is the only way in which we can make sure that the police really are the public and the public really are the police.”