Is Andy Burnham right to accuse Amber Rudd of a 'stitch-up' over Orgreave ?

[Lanchester]

Is Andy Burnham right to accuse Amber Rudd of a 'stitch-up' over Orgreave ?

[OlennasWimple]

Link?

[Lanchester]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/31/disgusting-furious-andy-burnham-accuses-amber-rudd-of-a-stitch-u/

[madcatwoman61]

Yes

[Aibohphobia]

No. It's political posturing.

Have you noticed it tends to be the opposition calling for enquiries be it Cons. into the war in Iraq or this into what happened in Orgreave.

[ForalltheSaints]

There should be an inquiry into what happened at Orgreave. I think it influenced policing at least in South Yorkshire for a number of years, and wonder if the approach after Hillsborough and the lies would have happened in quite the same way if there had been an inquiry after Orgreave.

If policing policies and methods have changed, let's bring them out in the open. Let us hear from some of the police from other forces brought in to the miner's strike- was there a duty of care as we now term it towards them?

There may be mass protests if the third runway plan is not dropped and so policing mass protest is a live issue in my view.

[legotits]

I'm not a fan of Burnham in general.

He's right though this stinks.

[BecauseIamaBear]

I heard the interview and think he has a point about the culture of the police.. Consider the story a week or so about police looking for witnesses to a "citizens arrest" after the person "arrested" late died... and compare that to the conduct of the police after PC Harwood walked forward from a line of his fellow officers and hit Ian Tomlinson in the back pushing him. to the ground... Mr Tomlinson also died..There was no subsequent call for witnesses. Indeed there was a pretty effective cover up and nothing was said until a video was posted on youtube. Even after the dewth became public, there was a culture of cover up and it seemed the establishment was most concerned about protecting itself from scrutiny..

Where I agree with Mr Burnham is that I want our grandchildren to be able to trust the police. At the moment I do not trust them.

[rainyinnovember]

The issue I have to be totally honest is that the money, time and resources going into historic enquirers takes it away from current ones, and I can't help but wonder if that is wise.

[BecauseIamaBear]

Well said..

[PigletWasPoohsFriend]

It is political posturing I agree.

Yes imo there should be an inquiry, however of course politicians position themselves for political gain. Unfortunately that's the nature of politics.

[BillSykesDog]

Exactly rainy. Everybody involved in Orgreave is long retired or dead. I don't know what they think it will achieve. As Rudd said, it involved no deaths or wrongful convictions. It would make no difference to the way we police today. It would be a total waste of money. SYP has enough on it's plate these days without getting tied up in another long, tangled enquiry.

[TheNaze73]

Labour can say whatever they like st the moment. They're the opposition for a reason.
Why in their 13 ineffectual years of government did they not choose to have the enquiry???
Desperate people, do anything when they're in trouble. When you're say 19 points behind the Conservatives in the latest opinion polls, you will try all the pathetic political posturing, that you can.

[Lanchester]

Many people say that the police during the national miners strike - including Orgreave - were used in a way that was in fact for political ends by the very divisive government of the day. That risk of misuse of the police is still an unresolved issue to this day.
Obviously society needs to have security and proper rules that need to be properly and fairly enforced. But that requires confidence in our police to be maintained by society. In recent years that confidence has been undermined by a number of significant scandals, Rotherham child abuse failure to investigate, Hillsborough related 2016 Court behaviour by the Police, Balcombe ...etc.
There has been military style police operations against peaceful anti-fracking protesters at for example Balcombe. Look how they treated Caroline Lucas MP and her son. There were hundreds of police semi-kettling a completely peaceful 'care for the environment' type crowd. satellite communication and other vans, a snatch squad - well at least one person was snatched out of the crowd by a small group of police officers that went into the peaceful demonstrators and grabbed him and put him in a police van (why? ...and what happened to him after that?)-, abuse of position by police 'liaison' officers to try and get information by asking nosey and irrelevant personal questions whilst supposedly just chatting with individual friendly demonstrators - and it seemed that those liaison officers were recording the conversations also ( why?). There were police walking at the side of the demonstrators with expensive shoulder mounted video cameras recording at a very short range. There was an expensive helicopter flying overhead for hours in total with a large hi-tech video camera trained directly on demonstrators.
Many people warned that the police would use/abuse their high tech equipment to hack any Mobile phones that were taken to the demonstration.
The protesters were largely middle class (not that that should matter of course) and were notably peaceful, dedicated and good natured.
Basically it was a pretty blatant misuse of police in an oppressive way to produce a chilling effect on people's willingness to demonstrate against injustices in society, and to promote sectional financial and political interests.
So yes lets SUPPORT our police doing a good job, but let us make sure they are properly tasked and that there are proper avenues of ACCOUNTABILITY.
It should be clear to all police that they are professionals not automatons, and that they must accountable for failure to follow ethical standards.
Society can't really have truth and reconciliation without the TRUTH part !
So I think Andy Burnham was right.
Lets have an open and full enquiry.

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

Burnham is a consummate populist and a very ambitious guy. He is often to be seen campaigning for stuff that makes him look like some social justice hero and keeping his head well down when a more controversial, potentially vote losing issue arises.

He will probably be prime minister one day.

[madcatwoman61]

That doesn't mean he's wrong

[ComfortingKormaBalls]

Many people warned that the police would use/abuse their high tech equipment to hack any Mobile phones that were taken to the demonstration. I can't think they took many as mobiles were in their infancy.

The protesters were largely middle class so were the Police so whats your point?

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

I dunno, doesn't everyone know what happened at Orgreave? Of course the police were used as Thatcher's private army during the miner's strike. Who doesn't believe that nowadays?
I honestly don't see that there is a great deal to be gained by having a long expensive enquiry.

[OlennasWimple]

"Stitch up" suggests that she had agreed that there should be an inquiry but back-tracked on that. I don't think that's what happened (though happy to be corrected - I know May and Rudd both made warm noises about an inquiry, and Nick Timothy has previously written in support, but I haven't seen anything more definitive)

[Lanchester]

Comfortingkormaballs
Those two things related to policing at Balcombe in 2013 where the police unintentionally tended to undermine national public trust in policing by the way they acted during that legal and well behaved demonstration.
It is important to examine policing at Orgreave in 1984 as there still - about three decades after the events at Orgreave - seems to be too much macho policing at demonstrations, and not enough police accountability.
Openness and accountability about past policing would help to improve policing of any demonstrations nowadays.

[PuppetInParadize]

Well, Burnham wants to be Manchester Mayor, and that might be affecting his behaviour. And Rudd is correct that nobody died. And an enquiry would take a lot of public money when the Tories don't want that (i.e. 'public money') to be a thing. I think Burnham is more right than Rudd. Orgreave was a policy changing event - however, most right- thinking people probably know enough of what happened there already. I'm not sure an enquiry will change much.

[caroldecker]

The police were managing an illegal strike and were aiming to prevent the events at the battle of Satley Gate in 1972.
If the miners strike in 84-85 had been legal, things might have been different.
I always blame the miners for the closure of the UK mining industry.

[Blandings]

Yes and yes there should be an enquiry. The police need to be brought to account and there are still lessons to be learnt today about the role of the police in disputes and the politicisation of the police in the UK. The NUM was winning the strike until Thatcher and cabinet asked the police to step up the policing.

This wasn't a dispute about an unprofitable industry, this was an ideological battle to destroy the NUM - the largest and most powerful union in the country.

Thatcher continually lied about the extent of the plans to close pits, stockpiled coal and imported cheap coal from Germany.

[rainyinnovember]

Genuine question, what good would that do now?

[ItsJustNotRight]

Absolutely.

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

Burnham realises the Labour Party is in utter shambles. He will go and be Manchester mayor for a few years, start a few publicity grabbing good guy initiatives, bide his time until Labour has sorted itself out and he can be sure of choosing the winning side. Then he will pop back, just as the public are completely fed up with the Tories, dance his way into the Labour leadership, win the election and waltz into number ten.

I can seriously see it happening.