Although I do not know why he thinks that the class war that he describes is over, Owen Jones writes:
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” they say about Orgreave.
But “sleeping dogs in South Yorkshire police lied, lied and lied again, not just about their own conduct but about the victims and other football supporters”.
These are not my words: they were penned by Nick Timothy, the prime minister’s joint chief of staff, just months ago.
In the 1980s, the police were politicised, transformed into blunt instruments as part of a wider concerted mission to neutralise the British labour movement.
It was in this context that South Yorkshire police were encouraged to dehumanise striking miners, to see them as violent, extremist, “enemy within” scum.
When they violently charged at miners, lied about their behaviour with the complicity of the British media, dictated false witness statements and tried to stitch up their victims, they began a long march that ended in the Hillsborough disaster and 96 dead Liverpool fans.
It was class war, and it ended with bodies sprawled in make-do mortuaries.
Allegedly, you cry.
Fine: it is a story repeatedly related to me by people who were actually at Orgreave and that is borne out by subsequent police testimonies, and I believe it both highlights a terrible miscarriage of justice and is revealing about how power works in this country.
You may disagree, but an inquiry would have given the opportunity to settle the issue.
And, yes, Labour should have initiated its own when it was in office, although it was its belated decision to launch the Hillsborough inquiry that fuelled demands for justice for Orgreave.
But the home secretary, Amber Rudd, claims one is not necessary because there were “no deaths or wrongful convictions”.
The police can apparently drag victims through the courts under false pretexts, as long as they fail to stitch them up effectively.
Police can wrongly inflict violence on fellow citizens, as long as nobody is killed.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this.
South Yorkshire police were violent, ideologically driven and corrupt. But they were not stupid.
They behaved as they did because they believed they had official sanction to do so.
They then learned a lesson – quite reasonably – that they could act with impunity.
Counterfactual history is a mug’s game, and it would be wrong to state with total certainty that Hillsborough would never have happened if the police had been held to account after Orgreave.
But it is beyond question that their subsequent behaviour was uncannily similar: treating their working-class victims as scum, lying in concert with the British media, falsifying witness statements, covering up what they did.
And this time people did die – in their dozens.
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” they say about Orgreave.
But “sleeping dogs in South Yorkshire police lied, lied and lied again, not just about their own conduct but about the victims and other football supporters”.
These are not my words: they were penned by Nick Timothy, the prime minister’s joint chief of staff, just months ago.
In the 1980s, the police were politicised, transformed into blunt instruments as part of a wider concerted mission to neutralise the British labour movement.
It was in this context that South Yorkshire police were encouraged to dehumanise striking miners, to see them as violent, extremist, “enemy within” scum.
When they violently charged at miners, lied about their behaviour with the complicity of the British media, dictated false witness statements and tried to stitch up their victims, they began a long march that ended in the Hillsborough disaster and 96 dead Liverpool fans.
It was class war, and it ended with bodies sprawled in make-do mortuaries.
Allegedly, you cry.
Fine: it is a story repeatedly related to me by people who were actually at Orgreave and that is borne out by subsequent police testimonies, and I believe it both highlights a terrible miscarriage of justice and is revealing about how power works in this country.
You may disagree, but an inquiry would have given the opportunity to settle the issue.
And, yes, Labour should have initiated its own when it was in office, although it was its belated decision to launch the Hillsborough inquiry that fuelled demands for justice for Orgreave.
But the home secretary, Amber Rudd, claims one is not necessary because there were “no deaths or wrongful convictions”.
The police can apparently drag victims through the courts under false pretexts, as long as they fail to stitch them up effectively.
Police can wrongly inflict violence on fellow citizens, as long as nobody is killed.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this.
South Yorkshire police were violent, ideologically driven and corrupt. But they were not stupid.
They behaved as they did because they believed they had official sanction to do so.
They then learned a lesson – quite reasonably – that they could act with impunity.
Counterfactual history is a mug’s game, and it would be wrong to state with total certainty that Hillsborough would never have happened if the police had been held to account after Orgreave.
But it is beyond question that their subsequent behaviour was uncannily similar: treating their working-class victims as scum, lying in concert with the British media, falsifying witness statements, covering up what they did.
And this time people did die – in their dozens.
Imagine if a Labour government had ruled Britain in the
1980s, deliberately run down the financial sector, and sent police officers
rampaging through the Home Counties to beat up City workers fighting for their
jobs and communities.
The truth is the Tories are soaked in triumphalism. They transformed Britain in the 1980s, they are proud of it – fine – and they have no interest in exposing the ugly deeds committed in the process.
As Norman Tebbit puts it, “an inquiry could have been used as a stick with which to beat the Thatcher government”.
That’s what this is really about: not justice, but defending the reputation of a Conservative party that was content to subvert the rule of law if that was what it took.
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, one side preaches the class war, the other practises it.
But Theresa May’s government should be warned.
Those driven by justice tend to be persistent – and history judges them rather more kindly than those who obstruct them.
The truth is the Tories are soaked in triumphalism. They transformed Britain in the 1980s, they are proud of it – fine – and they have no interest in exposing the ugly deeds committed in the process.
As Norman Tebbit puts it, “an inquiry could have been used as a stick with which to beat the Thatcher government”.
That’s what this is really about: not justice, but defending the reputation of a Conservative party that was content to subvert the rule of law if that was what it took.
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, one side preaches the class war, the other practises it.
But Theresa May’s government should be warned.
Those driven by justice tend to be persistent – and history judges them rather more kindly than those who obstruct them.
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