[St Charles Owl]

You mean the Blair/closet Tory govt that ruled during that period. I'd never regard it as a true Labour govt and I'm sure many grass roots NLP members view it in the same way.

No he meant Andy Burnham, a guy who could equally be labeled as not true Labour!!

I lived in Sheffield through the miners strike, worked in a steel mill at the time and saw the picketing etc at first hand. I don't truly understand what anyone thinks an inquiry will achieve at this point. We all saw the violence on both sides, we all saw the police using heavy handed tactics and running huge horses at pickets, we all saw the abuse given to other industrial workers including at my work by the "flying" pickets, we saw the coach driver killed by a brick being dropped from a bridge on the M1 by miners, we still see the chanting of scab every time any Yorkshire team plays Nottm Forest etc etc etc. What will an inquiry tell us that we don't all already know???

Lets imagine there is a new inquiry. It will cost taxpayers millions of pounds, will line the pockets of the lawyers once again and will probably see both sides were to blame for the violence. It will identify some now retired or dead police officers of doing something wrong, it should identify the leaders of the NUM at inciting and supporting violence by pickets although I doubt that and it should identify pickets perpetrating violent acts against police officers, again all things we all know went on, but aside from that what will it achieve?? If the campaigners are simply out to apportion blame, then fine we know what the only verdict they will accept is anyway and as regards police tactics with crowd control and at these sort of incidents then I very much doubt the SYP or any other police force use the sort of tactics we saw back in the 80s. What happened was wrong, mistakes were made but both sides for me were to blame, but I get the feeling that the campaigners don't want to hear that, they want to blame the police for eveything that happened, and that is equally unfair as blaming the miners for everything. I just feel this is a pointless exercise that does more to harm communities and today's police when that money should be put into true community policing and support to help heal the wounds that exist.

Tin hat is firmly on!!!!