Barbara Jackson speaks during a press conference in Barnsley [Image: Danny Lawson/PA].

It seems clear to This Writer that the Conservatives don’t want an inquiry into the “Battle of Orgreave” because it would reveal their own complicity with South Yorkshire Police.

So I say, let’s see a crowdfunding bid for a judicial review of Amber Rudd’s decision as soon as possible, and let’s haul the Conservatives over the coals.

Be warned, though: We’re all going to hear a lot of nonsense about Orgreave, especially from Tory MPs. There was one on the BBC News Channel on Tuesday (November 1), accusing Labour of ignoring the issue while it was in government.

(Jeremy Corbyn has promised an inquiry if Labour is elected in 2020.)

Well, somebody asked prominent Orgreave campaigner Andy Burnham MP that very question. Here’s his answer:

That’s right – the cabinet papers on Orgreave weren’t published until last year. It is now much harder for the Conservatives to deny links between their government of the day and what happened there.

We might have had a whitewash before, and would have been unable to do anything about it when the papers came out.

I await the nonsense from Tories and their supporters, that will undoubtedly spew forth in response to this clear explanation.

Campaigners for an inquiry into the “Battle of Orgreave” have declared that the gloves are off as they step up calls for a judge-led investigation into brutal clashes between police and mineworkers during the 1984 miners’ strike.

In a defiant press conference at the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) hall in Barnsley, campaigners said they were considering mounting a crowdfunded bid for a judicial review of Amber Rudd’s decision not to hold any kind of inquiry into the episode.

Barbara Jackson, secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, was close to tears as she described feeling “shocked and devastated” by the home secretary’s decision.

Addressing the crowd of former pitworkers, their relatives, supporters and union activists in the South Yorkshire town, Jackson said: “We have focused on police violence because we thought that was the best way to get our inquiry – now we’re going to focus as well as that on the political side of the strike and the involvement of Margaret Thatcher’s government of the time … We regard the gloves as off on our side.”

She said Jeremy Corbyn had promised an Orgreave inquiry if Labour were elected at the next general election, and that the campaign was also looking at a possible “peoples’ inquiry”.

Source: Orgreave inquiry campaigners say the gloves are off | UK news | The Guardian

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