‘RIGHT THE WRONGS’ OF THE MINERS’ STRIKE

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2013 :: RMTnews 9 Parliamentary column national security to go before a Court he/she can sign a PII. The judge will then decide if the material goes before the court. Unlike the new proposals, under PII a judge cannot rely on material that is seen by one party and not the other. Whatever does go before the court is available to both sides in the litigation. If material is excluded from the court then the government cannot rely on excluded material in any trial. The judge decides the issue by balancing the public interest in withholding material against the interests of justice in disclosing it to the other side. The PII system has worked for decades. The current system gives the judge a range of tools to deal with sensitive material – use of redactions, giving the opponent the gist of the evidence, hearings in camera, anonymity orders, security witnesses giving evidence from behind screens etc. In this way genuinely confidential material touching on national security is protected and preserved. We do not need this new radical law. It is an unnecessary and disproportionate reaction to a handful of cases that have caused political embarrassment. RMT rejects the Bill and I urge all members to contact their MPs to make it clear there is no place for such reactionary laws in 21st century Britain. The year 1984 was a defining moment in the history of industrial relations in the UK. It was the year the Thatcher Government took on Britain’s miners in an often brutal confrontation that ultimately signalled the death knell for the mining industry. For 12 long months we held out against a Government hell bent on destroying our proud industry as we fought for our jobs, our livelihoods and our futures. But nearly three decades after the strike there are growing calls for one particular aspect of one of Britain’s most angry and violent post-war trade union struggles to be re-examined and fully investigated. As the bitter strike dragged on month after month, the Government pitched police forces into battle against my picketing miner colleagues, sometimes forcing friends, neighbours and even relatives into confrontations between one another as scores of men were arrested and threatened with public order offences to tackle the threat from the ‘enemy within’ as Margaret Thatcher said of the dispute. There were clashes all over the country but the most notorious came midway through the strike at the British Steel coking plant at Orgreave in South Yorkshire where 8,000 picketing miners and 4,500 police officers faced up to one another. The versions of what happened that day during what became known as the ‘Battle of Orgreave, unsurprisingly differ widely between the miners and the police, with the miners alleging police brutality, unwarranted arrests and falsification of evidence on a scale unknown in the history of industrial disputes. Ninety-three arrests were made as 51 pickets and 72 policemen were injured. But evidence is now emerging in the wake of the report into the Hillsborough disaster when 96 Liverpool fans died at an FA Cup Semi-final game against Nottingham Forest, backing up the claims of the miners that Orgreave was – in the words of eminent QC Michael Mansfield – ‘the biggest frame-up ever’. The common denominator between Hillsborough and Orgreave, of course, was South Yorkshire police. At the time I was a young man working at Ellington Colliery which at the time was the biggest undersea deep coal mine in Europe. Three years before the strike began I had followed generations of my family down the pits of Northumberland. Although just a young miner I fervently supported the strike action; was the only apprentice in the North East coalfield to refuse to go into work; and was arrested no fewer than seven times during the strike. Now I am of those leading the calls for not only a full inquiry into incidents such as Orgreave, but for a total amnesty for those who still carry a criminal record for alleged picket line offences. Why? Because all those years ago a massive miscarriage of justice took place that requires investigating and correcting. Law-abiding men who had never been in trouble faced the prospect of going to prison for something they had not done and were coerced into accepting a public order offence which is still on their records, rather than being locked up. Orgreave may have been the tipping point because it exposed a police cover- up and manipulation of evidence on an unprecedented scale, but there were wrongs that need righting in every coalfield. Ten years ago I was elected to succeed Arthur Scargill as the President of the NUM before become Wansbeck’s MP two years ago and recently in Parliament I tabled an early day motion calling for a comprehensive inquiry into police activities during the 1984 strike. It is time to acknowledge what took place and to cleanse the records of everyone arrested and subjected to plea bargaining. There should be a total amnesty and the charges erased from the records for all time. MP for Wansbeck Ian Lavery is a member of the RMT parliamentary group ‘RIGHT THE WRONGS’ OF THE MINERS’ STRIKE To sign the e petition for the Orgreave Justice Campaign go to: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/41844