There is no point to Labour’s Orgreave inquiry

Share this article

We can now draw a cautious inference about Rachel Reeves’s forthcoming tax increases. They are unlikely to include a wealth tax. Why? Because the Labour Left, which wants such taxes, might be less prone to grumble, now that it has been fed some red meat. This is in the form of an inquiry into an event which occurred just over 40 years ago, though largely forgotten except in left-wing circles: the battle of Orgreave.

To describe it as a battle may sound hyperbolic, yet is not unjustified. It was the climax in a series of events which could be described as an insurrection. If the day had gone the other way, there could have been dramatic consequences. After the 1983 election, in which Margaret Thatcher had won a thumping majority, the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill made an interesting observation. He declared that the election result was not the final word. The Tories had votes. He had miners and was determined to prove that, Tory government or no, the country could only be governed on his terms.

Although this was hubristic, recent history suggested that it was not an impossible ambition.

By the 1960s, politicians of all parties had concluded that one reason for Britain’s chronic economic weakness was the country’s anarchic industrial relations. It ought to have been easier for a Labour premier to tackle that problem, and Harold Wilson tried, with legislation under the headline ‘In Place of Strife’. Much of his party would not accept this, so Wilson backed down: one reason why Ted Heath won the 1970 election. He decided to carry on where Wilson had failed, but made a crucial strategic error. As soon as he was in Downing Street, he should have reintroduced ‘In Place of Strife’, verbatim. Even Wilson at his weaselly best – or worst – would have found it hard to denounce proposals which he had so recently sponsored.

Instead, the Tories launched an exceptionally complicated industrial relations bill. The unions found it easy to obstruct Heath’s plans, and they had new shock troops, in the form of the miners, led by Arthur Scargill. In early 1972, the miners came out on strike, over pay. But the trouble rapidly escalated. In order to block the supply of existing coal stocks to electricity power stations, the miners began mass picketing, encouraged by a union official, Arthur Scargill from South Yorkshire. The pickets won. After they had threatened to overwhelm a coal depot at Saltley Gate in Birmingham, the local chief constable closed Saltley in the interests of public safety. The strike had succeeded. It appeared that mass picketing had made the miners invincible.

Industrial militancy continued, culminating in late 1973 and into 1974 in the three-day week, imposed by the Heath government in order to conserve energy, and then to deal with a miners’ strike. Heath tried to break the deadlock by calling an election under the slogan ‘Who governs the country?’ He lost, because many voters gave him a dusty answer: ‘Obviously not you, matey.’

Once re-elected, Wilson had a simple solution to industrial militancy: give the unions whatever they wanted. As a result, the economy crumbled and with it, national morale. A lot of senior politicians came to a bleak though covert conclusion: that the best Britain could hope for was the orderly management of decline.

There was one newly emerging senior politician who disagreed. Covertly, she would have regarded acquiescence in national decline as tantamount to treason. Margaret Thatcher and some of her intimates knew that, sooner or later, Scargillite militancy would have to be defeated, in order for the government of the country to be restored to democratic control. But they did not underestimate the scale of the task. 

Their life was made easier when a third successive government fell victim to the trade unions. There was an irony. The prime minister who was crippled by the ‘Winter of Discontent’ was Jim Callaghan, who had done so much to sabotage ‘In Place of Strife’. But this proved that no government, Labour or Tory, had found an answer to the problem. Although Thatcher knew that it would be down to her, she was in no hurry. In 1981, her government gave way to wage demands from the miners, because the preparations had not been made to resist them. Then they were made. Nigel Lawson, as energy secretary, ensured that the coal stocks around power stations should be piled high. Leon Brittan, the home secretary, made it clear to chief constables that there were to be no more capitulations as at Saltley. 

Meanwhile in the other camp, Arthur Scargill, flushed with previous successes, had come to underrate the forces against him. The Coal Board announced that a pit was to be closed. For Scargill, that was a casus belli. He declared an immediate strike, with no ballot. That proved unacceptable to many Nottinghamshire miners, so Scargill set about intimidating those who continued to work by sending flying pickets to coerce them. The same tactic was employed at power stations and coking stations, as at Orgreave. On 18 June, the day of the battle, thousands of pickets descended on Orgreave, to be confronted by large numbers of policemen. The police won.

Immediately, accusations poured in from leftists who sympathised with the strike. It was alleged that policemen had not kept proper records and that unnecessary force was used, especially when it came to charges by police horses. It was also claimed that ministers had been determined to win. If that latter point is not true, it ought to have been. Ministers are responsible for upholding law and order, which was certainly under threat at Orgreave.

As for police over-reaction, any fair-minded person looking at the footage could only come to one conclusion. To repel the attacks on them, the British police used fists, truncheons and no doubt the occasional boot. In any other country, the police would have been equipped with tear-gas and probably also with live ammunition. In many other countries, a paramilitary police force would have been deployed at an event such as Orgreave. At Orgreave, there were no fatalities. In other jurisdictions, there would have been.

Did some policemen use their truncheons more than was strictly necessary? Almost certainly, but what should one expect? The pickets were hurling missiles. It was not through lack of malice that they failed to inflict serious injuries, or fatalities. The police were there to prevent violent pickets from closing down a coking-station. In so doing, the police were acting in self-defence.

Some 40 years on, what is the point of an inquiry? Memories will have faded, documents will have been lost. The Orgreave inquiry will be an utter waste of time and money. So why is it being held? Because much of the Left is still in mourning. This is not because the odd picket received a few more bruises than he was strictly entitled to. They are in mourning for the death of socialism. Arthur Scargill was a syndicalist. He wanted to use trade union militancy to overthrow what he would have regarded as an illegitimate bourgeois democracy. After Orgreave, it became clear that the flying picket would not prevail. Where Wilson, Heath and Callaghan had failed, Margaret Thatcher would succeed – in bringing the trade unions under the rule of law.

Today, Angela Rayner seems determined to undo some of Margaret Thatcher’s successes. The Deputy Prime Minister believes in giving workers more rights. In one respect, she too will succeed, in giving more workers the right to remain unemployed.

There is only one thing to be said in favour of the Orgreave inquiry. It will do less harm than Angela Rayner.

Share this article