No inquiry on the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ – because Conservatives were too deeply involved?
Amber Rudd says this is not a miscarriage of justice. Judging by appearances, it is impossible to agree.
How best to define Home Secretary Amber Rudd after today’s controversial announcement that there will be no inquiry into events at the “Battle of Orgreave”?
Well, I could say that – as her name suggests two of the colours used on traffic lights – she is extremely green to think she can make such an announcement and expect the issue to go away.
Or I could suggest that she has lived up to her surname, in that a ‘Rudd’ is defined (after Australian politician Kevin Rudd, not her) as an “extremely boneheaded political move”. The definition certainly seems appropriate here.
Explanations for Ms Rudd’s evasiveness have been flying thick and fast. A former BBC industrial correspondent, speaking on the BBC’s PM programme, said he thought an inquiry would reveal too many links between South Yorkshire Police and the Conservative Government of the day, as then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher was “micro-managing” its response to the miners’ strike.
This certainly seems to be borne out by Cabinet papers from the time, on which Mrs Thatcher scrawled a query about the possibility of direct government funding to provide horses and dogs for the then-chief constable, a Mr Wright.
As Steve Walker states in his Skwawkbox article: “The Orgreave scandal, at its heart, is not a scandal into a criminal police force, even though the same force was involved in both Orgreave and Hillsborough.
“It is a scandal that exposes the black heart of the Tory party going back decades and continuing right through to the present, which they and their backers have spent billions of pounds hiding.
“And that is why Rudd and her party had no intention of allowing public scrutiny.
“The police were not in any sense ‘rogue’. They were acting under instructions that were already in preparation fully 7 years before the Battle of Orgreave. The police were simply a weapon in the hands of the real culprits: self-entitled Tories who felt no compunction whatever about using the police and other state apparatus against ordinary citizens simply trying to defend their livelihoods and the communities that depended on them from the predations of arrogant politicians in the pockets of private interests.”
He adds: “They’ve never stopped doing what they were doing then.“
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed his party will continue to push for an inquiry.
He said: “What happened in Orgreave was dreadful. What happened in Orgreave was terrible. What happened in Orgreave damaged the lives of those families who were wrongly accused of things they did not do.”
This is not over. Amber Rudd – and her forerunner as Home Secretary, the current prime minister, Theresa May – would be a fool to think otherwise.
There will be no inquiry into the notorious events at the so-called “Battle of Orgreave”, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced.
Thousands of miners and police clashed at the Yorkshire coking site in 1984.
Campaigners said officers led by South Yorkshire Police were heavy-handed and manufactured statements.
However, Mrs Rudd said she did not believe there was “sufficient basis… to instigate either a statutory inquiry or an independent review”.
In a written statement, Mrs Rudd said: “Despite the forceful accounts and arguments provided by the campaigners and former miners who were present that day about the effect that these events have had on them, ultimately there were no deaths or wrongful convictions.”
Source: Battle of Orgreave inquiry ruled out – BBC News
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“It is a scandal that exposes the black heart of the Tory party going back decades and continuing right through to the present, which they and their backers have spent billions of pounds hiding”.
Thatcher was the key proponent of police brutality, and not just against the miners, Stonehenge ‘Druids’ were viciously dispersed under her chief of staff and apologist Alex Douglas Hurd. The simple reason for Amber Rudd’s decision, (Well it’s not really her’s) is to protect the Thatcher legacy on which the Tories rely. (You may remember her sending aid to her wayward son, on several occasions). Were this a Labour era, no such decision would have carried.
The front of the woman is pretty impressive, knowing as she must, that conclusions are going to be drawn from this in the light of all the other factors that we already know about Orgreave. I can’t decide whether she is May’s useful idiot or whether she is managing the idiocy all on her own. Probably the former.
There are still too many Maggie worshippers in the upper echelons of the Tory party still alive who do not want the truth about the “sainted” Margaret and themselves to come out, and they will pull the strings as long as they can. I noticed Norman Tebbit was on TV tonight. Quelle surprise!
Well there are plenty of us who remember the events of June 1984 very well and we Londoners also remember the involvement of the Met police in miners strikes and their behaviour that year towards pickets.
Bring on the petitions.
So maybe we should not call for an Inquirey into the Orgrieve Battle, but one that is focussed on political interference with policing with special reference to the Battle for Orgrieve.
Without a full Inquiry into the events how on earth can she say “there were no wrongful convictions”? She doesn’t know that. This is just another Tory cover up.
Well we all know that Amber Rudd has Nazi tendencies. It seems Thatcher is dead but still runs the Tory Party. They are too scared to admit they were wrong to do what they did. I lived in Scunthorpe at the time and had to ride my moped through the police. I was pushed onto the wrong side of the road. spat at, had things thrown at me. These b*****ds have questions to answer but this fascist government won’t ask them.
The picture shown says it all. A man carrying a camera is being chased down by a thug on horseback intent on smashing his truncheon against the chap. What kind of “police” force do we have? Steve blames the Thatcher Government, but that does not excuse the b*****d on a F*****g big horse hell bent on criminal assault.
this must be the reason the the child abuse inquiry keeps getting put off,because it’ll lead back to these b*****ds being responsible for that as well.
The police force, otherwise known as the paramilitary arm of the Tory party.
Surprise, surprise, another tory whitewash, they are trying to hide the truth from the people once again and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, all tories are Hitler lovers, you have to be to become a tory!
Orgreave showed just how easy it was to turn civil and military personnel against their own people, and we wonder how Hitler and the Fascists managed to corrupt Germany, wonder no more , we already have an example that is very homegrown.