THE Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, is to chair a statutory inquiry into the violence at the coking plant at Orgreave, Rotherham, in 1984, when 6000 police officers, many on horseback, confronted a protest of striking miners who had responded to a call by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for a mass picket of the pit.
The inquiry will be “thorough and fair”, Dr Wilcox said on Monday. The NUM has promised him “any assistance that he requires to ensure that the inquiry uncovers the truth about who orchestrated the events at Orgreave . . . so that precautions can be put in place so it never happens again.”
The miners were striking over the National Coal Board’s plans to close 20 collieries, with the loss of 20,000 jobs: 120 injuries were recorded as riot squads pursued fleeing miners into Orgreave village, and 95 picketers — assembled to prevent lorries conveying coke to the Scunthorpe steelworks — were arrested and charged with riot and violent disorder. All the charges were later dropped after the evidence was discredited.
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) and others have long championed the call for a public inquiry into the conduct of South Yorkshire Police (News, 8 March 2019), who said in a statement in July 2024: “It would not be appropriate for the South Yorkshire Police of today to seek to explain or defend the actions of the force in 1984, as everyone involved in the miners strike has long since retired and the information we hold has not been properly processed.”
A small team it said, was reviewing and cataloguing 82,913 pages of 1714 files of material, a process likely to take “another 18 months to two years”. In April 2024, Northumbria Police destroyed, on the grounds of the time that had elapsed, any remaining papers associated with the strike and Orgreave.
Labour made a manifesto commitment to hold an inquiry, if elected. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said on Monday: “Every community should have confidence in their police, but we know what happened at Orgreave cast a shadow over communities in Yorkshire and other mining areas. The violent scenes and subsequent prosecutions raised concerns that have been left unanswered for decades, and we must now establish what happened.
“I pay tribute to the campaigners who have never stopped in their search for truth and justice, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we build an inquiry that gets the answers they and their communities deserve.”
The inquiry will be statutory, with the appropriate powers to compel people to provide information where necessary. Bishop Wilcox said in a statement on Monday: “I’m extremely grateful to the Home Secretary for the opportunity to chair this inquiry, and for the support I shall be given in doing so. I do not underestimate the weight of expectation or the significance of the task.
“I look forward to engaging with stakeholders in the coming weeks over the draft terms of reference, and to working with the Government to identify experts to support me on the independent panel. I expect the panel to begin its work in the autumn, and we will endeavour to deliver an inquiry which is thorough and fair, and which will uncover what happened at Orgreave as swiftly as possible.”
The OTJC has declared the announcement as “really positive news”. Its secretary, Kate Flanner, said on Monday: “We now need to be satisfied that the inquiry is given the necessary powers to fully investigate all the aspects of the orchestrated policing at Orgreave, and have unrestricted access to all relevant information, including government, police, and media documents, photos and films.”
The absence of any investigation or accountability had “scarred those involved and people across the whole community”, the Mayor of South Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard, said. “We owe it to the miners, their families, and our communities to ensure that the events of Orgreave are finally understood. My hope is that the public inquiry is completed at pace, and that, at the end of the process, it brings closure and a sense of justice for those involved and their families, in particular, and that we are finally able to turn the page on the events of that moment in our history.”
