‘No cost limit on justice’

Just last week a full public inquiry into violent policing of striking miners at Orgreave in 1984 looked to be just on the horizon – unconfirmed reports said that home secretary Amber Rudd had given the go-ahead to a comprehensive investigation.

The news came after Rudd met a large delegation from the Ogreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) last Tuesday (September 13), joined by Labour MPs Andy Burnham, Jeremy Corbyn and Dennis Skinner (pictured) among others. After the meeting, campaigners said they were ‘quietly confident’.

But it was widely reported on Sunday (September 18) that a full public inquiry had in fact been ‘ruled out’.

One Whitehall source was reported as saying, “An inquiry like Hillsborough could take a very long time and be unwieldy in terms of cost. There is no appetite for that.”

But Unite organiser and OTJC chairperson Joe Rollin has dismissed these unofficial reports as “just leaks, rumours – nothing has been confirmed.”

“Much of what was reported in the press on Sunday was inaccurate anyway,” he explained. “They kept referring to a ‘full Hillsborough-style public inquiry’, but in the case of Hillsborough, there was never a full public inquiry in the first place. It was an independent panel followed by fresh inquests ordered by the Attorney General.”

Responding to the comment from the unnamed government source about the “unwieldy cost” of a potential inquiry, Rollin noted that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) had already undertaken two years of work investigating what happened at Orgreave, so much of the cost has already been shouldered by this work.

“If there is no thorough inquiry, then all of this money will have been a total waste,” he argued. “What we would also say is that there really should be no cost limit on justice.”

This is especially the case, Rollin noted, considering that the South Yorkshire Police has historically been implicated in so many instances of abuse of power and reckless negligence, such as in Hillsborough and also more recently in the Rotherham child abuse scandal.

“These have all involved the South Yorkshire Police and if you look back, it all starts with Orgreave,” he said. “So the pursuit of justice in a wider sense all hinges on an investigation into what happened at Orgreave. This is much bigger than simply establishing what happened on that day in June more than thirty years ago.”

Rollin condemned the “nasty stuff” being spouted off by people such as Lord Tebbit who just days ago smeared striking miners brutally beaten by police at Orgreave as “a bunch of hoodlums”.

“These comments and reports are coming from people from the past who were potentially complicit in what happened,” he said.

Fresh approach

Indeed, Lord Tebbit was one of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s closest advisers and played an instrumental role in the government’s ruthless targetting of trade unions.

“What’s needed now is a fresh approach,” Rollin argued.

He emphasised that the meeting the OTJC delegation had with home secretary Rudd last Tuesday was a very positive one.

“What we have had confirmed so far is not if an inquiry into Orgreave will take place – this is already a given – but only what form it will take,” Rollin said. “What we ask now is that the campaign be fully involved in forthcoming discussions to ensure that the type of inquiry is a suitable one that gets to the bottom of what happened at Orgreave.”

So if this week’s reports are only unconfirmed rumour, what do we know so far with certainty about a future inquiry?

Rollin said that Rudd confirmed she will make an announcement on the matter by the end of the October.

“As we await this announcement, we remain extremely hopeful,” he noted. “There is no doubt that an Orgreave inquiry will happen at this point – the government is simply under too much pressure.

“The Labour party has called for an inquiry, and so have all the trade unions and beyond – the IPCC wants an inquiry, the South Yorkshire Police chief said he welcomes an inquiry, and so has the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner – the list goes on.”

“There’s no turning back now.”

The OTJC is set to host a Justice Conference on Saturday, October 1 in Sheffield. Find out more here.