Time for the SNP to step up and call inquiry into 84-85 miners' strike

For an almost Teflon-coated SNP Government, it has had its fair share of problems with the justice brief over its nine years in government.

There was the global condemnation over the freeing of Megrahi, the criticism over the formation of Police Scotland, plans to scrap the requirement for corroboration in criminal cases abandoned and the controversy over sending armed police officers to routine incidents.

Such difficulties almost certainly played a part in Nicola Sturgeon, on becoming First Minister, removing Kenny MacAskill as Justice Secretary, after a turbulent seven and a half years in the post during Alex Salmond’s time in office.

The incumbent, Michael Matheson, is a figure viewed as a safe pair of hands in the brief and similarly with the education portfolio, which John Swinney has been handed, Sturgeon will be anxious that justice does not again become a problem area for her government.

But one of the few occasions in the last parliament when Labour managed to score a direct hit on the SNP was over the issue of calls for an inquiry into the 1984-85 miners’ strike and specifically the role of the police.

The SNP Government repeatedly refused to agree to calls from Labour MSP Neil Findlay and his colleagues for a Hillsborough-style inquiry into the convictions of nearly 500 Scottish miners during the strike. 

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Campaigners such as Findlay pointed to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and the publication of evidence detailing allegations of a police cover-up and manipulation of evidence linked to the policing of the tragedy at the football stadium in Sheffield which claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans.

They say the miners’ convictions may be “unsafe” and politically motivated – particularly for picket-line offences, for which miners claimed they were threatened with custodial sentences but offered less severe punishments if they accepted bail conditions banning them from picketing.

However, MacAskill and his then deputy Roseanna Cunningham repeatedly refused to order such a review or an inquiry linked to the dispute as a whole, despite mass lobbies of parliament by trade unionists and pressure from their own side.

Many on the Labour side found it difficult to understand why the self-styled left-of-centre SNP would not use its powers in government to review a dispute that took place under the watch of the Thatcher government, long before devolution.

But with campaigners pressing the issue again, in the wake of the Hillsborough inquest verdict in April, when it was found that the 96 people who died were unlawfully killed and a catalogue of failings by the police contributed to their death, the SNP is under growing pressure again to take a fresh look at Findlay’s demand. 

Reports that the UK Home Secretary Theresa May is considering an inquiry related to the clashes during the strike at the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire, will also add to such pressure on the SNP.

Findlay has already lodged a series of questions on the issue at Holyrood in relation to Hillsborough that state that the “findings of the inquest are such that many further questions arise in relation to other major events involving the police at that time”.

While it may be easier to ignore Labour in this parliament on the issue than it was in the last, with the party falling into third place behind the Tories, a decision by May to order an inquiry could place the SNP in an awkward position if it was seen to be refusing to move on an issue that even the UK Government had budged on in the wake of the Hillsborough findings.