A public inquiry into the infamous Battle of Orgreave must be held so nearly 100 miners falsely accused of charges including riot at last have a chance of justice, say campaigners.
It was 32 years ago next month around 8,000 striking miners and 5,000 police clashed at the South Yorkshire coking plant.
It resulted in 95 miners facing trumped up charges based on fabricated police evidence, with officers found to have perjured themselves in providing it.
Their victims included four Durham miners and Alan Cummings, chairman of the Durham Miners’ Association, said: “There should be at the very least a public inquiry into what happened at Orgreave. In fact there should be a public inquiry into the whole policy of the dispute.”
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Mr Cummings said at the trial of the Orgreave accused, when police evidence was given, “some of the jurors were actually laughing at what some of the police said it was such nonsense and so obviously made up”.
He added: “Yet not one officer, top or bottom from that day to this has been prosecuted. And Orgreave wasn’t a one off. There other incidents, like at Mansfield, where miners had gathered for a rally. A number were arrested and charged with riot.
“Witnesses were asked by the defence if they knew what a riot was it a riot they saw that day?
“They said they knew what a riot was and no it hadn’t happened, Instead they talked about how police violence and how they went over the top.”
He said the riot charges, as at Orgreave, were dropped.
The recent Hillsborough inquest verdict of the unlawful killing of the 96 Liverpool fans has seen growing calls for an inquiry as South Yorkshire Police was in charge at both events. And newly uncensored documents show that the same senior officers and solicitor were involved in the aftermath of both. It is claimed they knew police officers perjured themselves at the trial of striking miners arrested during the 1984 clashes - but kept it secret.
Five years later in 1989, it is claimed that history repeated itself.
One officer interviewed about the alleged Hillsborough cover-up by South Yorkshire Police claimed that at Orgreave some of his colleagues were told not to write anything in their notebooks.
They received the same instructions in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.
Campaigners say the evidence points to perjury, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office, all very serious criminal offences, which must be investigated. Their calls were recently backed by Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird QC, who represented the Durham miners at the trial.
The Orgreave Campaign for Truth and Justice (OCTJ) has submitted a legal argument outlining the case for a public inquiry to Home Secretary Theresa May. They are awaiting her response.
It has also called on the new interim chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, Dave Jones, to open up the force’s archives on the incident.
The challenge from the OCTJ came the day after Mr Jones marked the moment he took over temporary control of the South Yorkshire force by offering to listen to the activists, as well as families of the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough disaster.
Campaign secretary Barbara Jackson said they will take up Mr Jones’s offer but said they did not want it to be a “token gesture”.
Mrs Jackson said they want the chief constable to intervene in their legal bid to push Home Secretary Theresa May to hold a public inquiry into the events at Orgreave 32 years ago.
South Yorkshire Police referred itself to the IPCC in 2012 over allegations officers colluded to write court statements relating to Orgreave.
The watchdog later said the passage of time prevented a formal investigation but said there was “support” for the allegation that senior police exaggerated pickets’ use of violence.
The commission said on Tuesday it is now considering whether an uncensored version of the report can now be made public.
Mrs Jackson said: “We would be prepared to meet with Dave Jones if it’s going to be a productive meeting, and not just a token gesture.
“We have our legal submission that’s been with Theresa May since mid December. Our view is that if Dave Jones wants to be helpful and move things along, he needs to contact Theresa May and say: ‘you must be near in making a decision about whether to grant these people what they want and, if you do grant them what they want, I can assure you that I will open our archives, I will offer you the full cooperation of the South Yorkshire Police in pursuing the objective of the Orgreave campaigners’.
“That would be really helpful.”
She added: “There’s a huge cry now for more transparency and more accountability about these long-running injustices.
“It’s really unfair that ordinary people have to campaign for years and years and fight against all odds to get what they know is the truth out there and admitted by the police.
“South Yorkshire Police stands disgraced yet again by the appalling way they defended themselves in the Hillsborough inquests and fought back, resurrected all the lies.”
A spokeswoman for the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said the report it published last year was censored, partly because of the ongoing Hillsborough inquests.
She said that this decision was now being reconsidered following the conclusion of the hearings but noted that criminal investigations into Hillsborough were still ongoing.
Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said: “As I’ve always said, we won’t have the truth about Hillsborough until we have the full truth about Orgreave.
“Finally, this report provides proof of what has long been suspected - that underhand tactics were used first against South Yorkshire miners, before being deployed to much more deadly effect against Liverpool supporters.”
Mr Burnham added: “Like the people of Liverpool, the mining communities of South Yorkshire now need to be told the truth about their police force and the policing of the miners’ strike.
“On the back of these revelations, Theresa May must now order a disclosure process not just on Orgreave but on the policing of the miners’ strike.”
Dave Jones, who is the chief constable of North Yorkshire, was appointed to run South Yorkshire Police on a temporary basis on Tuesday.
His appointment follows the suspension of South Yorkshire chief constable David Crompton following the Hillsborough inquests and the short lived tenure of his deputy, Dawn Copley, who stood down from the temporary role after it emerged she was under investigation for alleged misconduct by her previous force.
