Orgreave campaign demands inquiry into police riot

By New Worker 

correspondent

Corbyn with OTJC supporters outside Parliament

CAMPAIGNERS from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) came to Westminster on Tuesday to lobby the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, for a full public inquiry into the police riot at Orgreave coking plant in 1884, during the great miners’ strike.

The campaigners included Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and a broad spectrum of Labour MPs including John McDonnell, Dennis Skinner, Diane Abbott, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Peter Hain and Hilary Benn.

The National Union of Miners (NUM) had assembled around 5,000 pickets outside Orgreave coking plant to block lorries taking coke from the plant to a British Steel plant. But police had deployed around 6,000 officers, including mounted police.

Police held the pickets in a field opposite the plant, completely surrounded with no exit. As the lorries approached the plant the unarmed pickets surged forward to block the gates by sheer weight of numbers.

South Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Clement ordered a mounted charge against them. The miners responded by throwing stones and other missiles at the police lines.

Clement ordered two further mounted advances and the third advance was supported by "short shield" snatch squads who followed the mounted police, "delivering baton beatings to the unarmed miners."

There followed a lull of several hours, during which many pickets left the scene. By now "massively outnumbering" the pickets, the police advanced again and launched another mounted charge.

The police pursued the pickets out of the field and into Orgreave village where Clement ordered a "mounted police canter", which Tristram Hunt, MP for Stoke-on-Trent, described as an "out-of-control police force charging pickets and onlookers alike through the village.

After the one-sided battle 71 pickets were charged with riot and 24 with violent disorder At the time, riot was punishable by life imprisonment. The trials collapsed when the evidence given by the police was deemed "unreliable".

Gareth Peirce, who acted as solicitor for some of the men, said that the charge of riot had been used "to make a public example of people, as a device to assist in breaking the strike," while lawyer Michael Mansfield called it "the worst example of a mass frame-up in this country this century.”

In 1991, South Yorkshire Police paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners for assault, wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution.

The BBC and other media misrepresented the battle by reversing the sequence – showing miners throwing stones before showing the police charging them, making it appear that it was the miners who had sparked the violence.

The OTJC presented a legal submission to Theresa May when she was Home Secretary last December 2015 outlining the case.

Kevin Horne, who was one of the picketing miners at the Orgreave coking plant, said: "Expectations in the mining communities are that a public inquiry will finally mean justice for Orgreave. It is also essential that public trust in the police is rebuilt."

The campaigners claim there was a “pre-planned, militarised police operation” and extensive violence against miners, leading to what they say were 95 wrongful arrests and prosecutions based on a falsified narrative.

The OTJC Secretary, Barbara Jackson, said: "The previous Home Secretary and the current Home Secretary have had ample time to read through and consider our legal submission. A response was expected by March this year. We are therefore hopeful that an inquiry decision is imminent."

Tories’ Islamophobic rant against Sadiq Khan

by New Worker

  correspondent

 ZAC GOLDSMITH, the Tory candidate in next week's London Mayoral contest, has turned his campaign against his Labour rival, Sadiq Khan, into an Islamophobic rant.

He never fails to mention that Khan is a Muslim and accuses him of repeatedly associating with Muslim extremists.

On 20^th April David Cameron, speaking during Prime Minister's Questions, claimed that Khan had repeatedly shared a platform with preacher Sulaiman Ghani, a man who "supports ISIS", he said. "Anyone can make a mistake about who they appear on a platform with but if you do it time after time after time, it is right to question your judgement," he told the Commons.

The Prime Minister's comments sparked cries of "racist" from Labour MPs, with leader Jeremy Corbyn shouting: "That's disgraceful and you know it."

Cameron gave no evidence of Ghani being associated with ISIS but there is plenty of evidence of Ghani being associated with a number of Tory politicians.

These include Dan Watkins, the Tory candidate for Khan’s parliamentary seat of Tooting, to whom Ghani says he lent support and canvassers at the election. This alleged supporter of ISIS really did support the Tories against Khan.

Tory minister Jane Ellison has also shared a platform with Ghani where they both addressed a Conservative Muslim forum in London last year.

But Cameron's and Goldsmith’s attacks on Khan have become so blatantly Islamophobic and racist that they are driving away some of their own supporters.

Peter Oborne, the former chief political columnist at the Daily Telegraph, described Goldsmith’s attacks against Sadiq Khan as "the most repulsive I have ever seen as a political reporter".

Goldsmith has repeatedly described his Muslim rival as "radical" and defended comments by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon that he is a "Labour lackey who speaks alongside extremists".

Writing in the [Middle East Eye, Oborne says that Goldsmith seemed "decent and non-partisan" when he first entered politics a decade ago. He had planned to vote for him to replace Boris Johnson next month but "wild horses could not make me do so now".

He continues: "Goldsmith's attempt to stir up sectarian division by turning on a single community is horribly reminiscent of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the US."

The "barrage of propaganda" from Goldsmith's camp "very worryingly” comes right from the top", adds the journalist, referring to David Cameron's comments in the Commons.

Despite being a life-long Conservative voter, Oborne says he will be "proudly voting for Khan" when Londoners head to the polls on 5^th May. "I urge everyone, including Tories, to do the same," he says. "Consider this: if Goldsmith's campaign succeeds it tells every single British Muslim that there is no role for them anywhere in the British democratic system."

But Goldsmith has continually denied he has done anything wrong. Defending his use of the word "radical", he told the Guardian that such tactics were "necessary in this campaign because I am up against somebody who poses a real danger to London".

Sadiq Khan responded in a speech at London Metropolitan University, where he studied law, by echoing the sentiments of Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen, who introduced him.

“There is,” Khan said, “a clear choice at the election on 5^th May. A choice between the politics of division and fear that has defined the Tory campaign, or the politics of unity, hope and opportunity that has defined mine. The Tory view of politics is all about division and fear.”

Speaking to reporters after the speech, Khan said he believed the “desperate, negative” Tory tactics, honed by the Australian election guru Lynton Crosby, would not resonate in the city.

“I think this Donald Trump approach to politics, trying to divide communities, turn them against each other – I don’t think will work in London,” he said. “We don’t just tolerate differences, we respect them. My campaign has Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, those who aren’t a member of an organised faith, rich, poor, old, young, black, white, gay, lesbian.”