THE Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign is honoured to be at the Durham Miners’ Gala again this year and delighted to be invited by the Durham Miners’ Association to speak on the main platform.

This is a day to celebrate mining communities, comradeship and unity, to reaffirm our dedication and commitment to the class struggle, a day of love and solidarity. It is also a time to celebrate the fantastic strength and resistance of the trade union movement, campaigns and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and remember the incredible gains and employment rights that the NUM fought for and obtained for the workers who powered Britain and the rest of the world.

We look forward to gathering with our banners, comrades, friends and supporters, old and new, the sounds of chatter and laughter, the hugs, the greetings, the smiles and the waves and marching to the wonderful sounds of the brass bands.

This 41st anniversary year of the miners’ strike reminds us that we must never forget the importance of that great strike to defend an industry, jobs, trade unions and communities and the fight for all our futures. We are indebted to the striking miners for their dedication to that year-long struggle that changed our lives forever.

Thank you to everyone who has campaigned with us over the last 13 years for an Orgreave inquiry. It has been a long, hard and sometimes lonely journey, but we are determined, persistent people, and we have been unrelenting and consistent in our campaigning. However, without the support and solidarity of the labour and trade union movement, we would never have been able to come this far.

Our campaign started 13 years ago in events related to Orgreave on June 18 1984, during the ’84-’85 miners’ strike. What happened at Orgreave is key to understanding what happened throughout that strike.

Events relating to this day can provide answers to how and why paramilitary violent policing across mining villages and communities all over Britain was taking place throughout the strike. The injustice faced by the miners and communities has never been acknowledged by the state, and instead, they have lied and covered it up.

We know that the Tory government of the 1980s was directly involved in the strike while professing “non-involvement.” The Tory Ridley plan of the 1970s had planned for it, and the 1980s Tory government put public resources into the implementation of this plan.

This was state state-sponsored organisation against the miners and their livelihoods. The Tories’ own archives confirm Parliament and the public were knowingly lied to, but their involvement in the strike and the policing of it has never been publicly acknowledged. Their involvement needs an inquiry.

The right-wing mass media colluded with the Tories by lying in their reports about what was really happening or not reporting at all. Their involvement in these lies and cover-ups continues to this day. The raw footage that the media companies have of police attacking miners at Orgreave and other footage of police violence and harassment must be handed over to an inquiry.

The 1980s Tory government planned to destroy the British coal industry and organised labour, the NUM and its great leaders Arthur Scargill, Peter Heathfield and Mick McGahey and the British labour and trade union movement. However, the movement is still here, organising, campaigning, resilient and winning.

Orgreave marked a turning point in the policing of public protest. Government interference in operational policing and industrial relations continues to this day. We see trade unionists, social justice, Palestine, environmental and peace campaigners being arrested on demonstrations just for being there. The right to protest should be a fundamental human right.

With no accountability of policing at Orgreave, a message was sent to the police that they could employ violence with impunity. This set a culture that enabled the police to cover up in 1989 after the Hillsborough disaster — and the Hillsborough campaigners are still fighting for justice to this day.

We want answers to questions about the systemic violent and lying behaviour of the police. We need to know how police officers on the ground were briefed and how that briefing came about, why the police were not held to account by the director of public prosecutions or by their own employer.

We need government and police papers that have been embargoed until 2066 and 2071 to be released. This is of great public interest and concern, and is about a government that actively worked against its own population and handed the police paramilitary powers and destroyed an industry in the process.

The Tories rejected an Orgreave inquiry. However, in October 2024, we held a positive meeting with the Home Secretary to discuss the Labour government’s commitment to an inquiry. A commitment that has been in the manifesto for nine years because of the work of consistent, well-organised grassroots activism from our campaign and supporters.

Arrested miners, their wives and supporters told the Home Secretary that an Orgreave inquiry needs to start urgently to ensure it happens in their lifetime. Since that meeting, the Home Secretary has met with a number of people, including politicians, lawyers and the NUM, to discuss plans.

Last month, the campaign received a letter from the Home Secretary indicating that they were considering the appropriate next steps for setting up an inquiry and would contact us again in the coming weeks with more information. This is extremely positive news. However, we are not complacent. We recently discovered that Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike and Orgreave documents in 2024. Everything we achieve, we have to fight for.

We know that police at protests can violently attack and arrest people. We hope that an Orgreave inquiry exposes what has happened and is happening in Britain to suppress protest and stifle dissent.

What is important is that, due to the age and health of many miners, we quickly secure a public acknowledgement of why and what the state did to the miners and our communities. We have to have hope that an inquiry of full disclosure should influence the future behaviour of the state and public officials. We look forward to celebrating an Orgreave inquiry in the near future with you all.

Kate Flannery is secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign — otjc.org.uk.