Labour leaders stood by as miners were attacked

The 1984-5 miners' strike had nothing to do with the economic viability of the mining industry.

From influential pressure groups such as the National Association for Freedom and ultimately Thatcher, radical right-wing ideological, political and economic strategies had already been years in the planning.

The battle for Orgreave was the first ideological testing ground, pitting the forces of bourgeois morality against a "criminal" class whose servile role within the structures of economic power and privilege was of questionable loyalty.

If successful, a gleaming new society dedicated to the free, possessive individual and money-mad materialism would rise out of the ashes of industrial wastelands that once resonated the sound of a proud, strong and vibrant working class.

This area now decimated by unemployment and hopeless deprivation.

Throughout the strike the Labour Party leadership remained true to their role as bourgeois apologists, joining the right-wing chorus for a national ballot and denouncing violence by miners against a blatant systematic barrage of police provocation and brutality.

For the current crop to now call for an inquiry into the criminal activities of the police during the strike is a level of hypocrisy that beggars belief.

Gary Cahill

Liverpool