Orgreave activists call for Hillsborough-like inquiry

The Orgreave scandal took place 27 years ago during the miners' epic 1984-5 strike against pit closures when armoured mounted police charged into lightly-clad pickets, beating them to the ground. Police on foot battered fleeing miners dressed in shorts, tee-shirts and trainers.

Police arrested 95 miners who were charged with riot, which carries a life sentence. Courts threw out every single case after evidence emerged of police collusion in preparing statements.

No-one has ever been brought to book for the pre-planned police attack on the pickets at the depot outside Rotherham in South Yorkshire.

Now activists are launching a campaign to get an inquiry into the events with help from the Hillsborough Families Group, which succeeded in exposing the truth about the football ground disaster 23 years ago when 96 Liverpool United football fans were killed at Sheffield United's Hillsborough ground.

The success of the Hillsborough families in exposing the truth about the police role has sparked hopes that an inquiry into Orgreave might achieve similar results - an investigation is under way into the police's role in the disaster and West Yorkshire Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison, who was a Chief Inspector in South Yorkshire at the time, has resigned.

Campaigners already plan to target hustings in South Yorkshire for the forthcoming elections of Police Commissioners, asking candidates to commit themselves to an inquiry into Orgreave. The first is on Monday at Hallam University in Sheffield.

Activist Barbara Jackson, who proposed the meeting, said: "We are at the bottom of a large mountain and we are going to need lots of help to push this back up the agenda."

Ms Jackson was on strike for a year as a member of the National Union of Mineworkers' white-collar section working for the National Coal Board in Sheffield.

"I am passionate about getting justice for what happened in the strike, for the decimation of the coal-mining industry and the decimation of the National Union of Mineworkers," she said.

nAn initial meeting to organise the campaign for an Orgreave inquiry takes place in Sheffield on Thursday November 8 at the Workstation events centre, Paternoster Row, opposite Sheffield's Midland Station and starts at 6pm. To find out more about the campaign email beejax@dsl.pipex.com