Say sorry for Maggie’s role in the miners’ strike, Labour tell the Tories
LABOUR will launch a bizarre campaign today to make David Cameron issue a formal public apology for Margaret Thatcher’s handling of the miners’ strike in the 1980s.
The Opposition will insist that the Government should say sorry for the actions of the late prime minister’s administration, claiming it deliberately sought to escalate the dispute.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister, Michael Dugher will raise the issue in the Commons, challenging ministers to set out ‘all details of the interactions between the government and the police at the time’.
He will also suggest that there should be a ‘proper investigation’ into the ugliest confrontation of the strike in 1984, when 10,000 striking miners clashed with 5,000 police officers in what became known as the Battle of Orgreave.
Lord Tebbit, who was Baroness Thatcher’s trade and industry secretary during the strike, dismissed Labour’s ‘justice for the coalfields’ campaign as absurd.
‘Next they’ll want an apology for freeing the Falklands,’ the Conservative peer said. ‘I presume Ed Miliband is doing this in order to get some more money from Unite [the union].
‘My recollection is that the police were principally used to protect miners who wanted to go to work and who had not been granted a ballot, but were being prevented from doing so by [National Union of Mineworkers leader] Arthur Scargill’s hate mob.
‘Neither Labour nor Scargill has ever apologised for that.’
Lord Tebbit added: ‘I trust the Government will merely laugh at this ridiculous campaign.’
It is likely to cause unease among the dwindling band of Blairite Labour MPs, who will fear that the party risks alienating Middle England by appearing to back Mr Scargill in a 30-year-old argument.
The move comes after the release of Cabinet papers earlier this month showing that Lady Thatcher came within days of declaring a state of emergency and calling out the military four months into the miners’ strike.
Ministers secretly discussed recalling Parliament in the summer of 1984 to pass emergency legislation, according the documents released to the National Archives.
The files show that plans were drawn up for soldiers to transport food and coal, but the idea was dismissed on the grounds that it would cause panic.
Labour says the papers also suggest that the Thatcher government had a secret plan to close 75 pits at the cost of 65,000 jobs and that it sought to influence police tactics to escalate the dispute.
Industrial action was triggered in March 1984 by plans to close 20 loss-making pits. Mr Scargill went into battle with the Tories and a year-long war of attrition ensued.
Mr Dugher, MP for the former pit town of Barnsley, where Mr Scargill was born, said: ‘For those of us who lived through the strike and who saw the events and impact they had first hand, what was revealed in the Cabinet papers may not come as a surprise.
‘But it is no less shocking to consider that, far from being neutral, as
‘Begin to foster reconciliation’
was claimed at the time, it is clear that the Government took a deliberately calculated political approach guided by a complete hostility to the coalfield communities.
‘That is why I am calling for justice for the coalfields.’
He added: ‘Ministers may want to sweep these events under the carpet, but the scars of the dispute and the subsequent closure programme remain on the memories, communities and landscapes of all coalfield communities.
‘They must now apologise and deliver transparency to begin to foster reconciliation with the coalfield communities.’