The Big Story
Seamus Nevin, head of employment and skills policy at the IoD, said: “The notion that employers prefer foreign workers to UK-born is wrong. Employers don’t discriminate by nationality – all that matters is the talent available.” The most damaging response came from LBC DJ James O’Brien. On his show he quoted an extract from Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, which explained the necessity of controlling immigrant workers for the ‘greater good’. “For the state must draw a sharp line of distinction between those who, as members of the nation, are the foundation and support of its existence and greatness, and those who are domiciled in the state, simply as earners of their livelihood there.” The passage had embarrassing similarities.
Billings, the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, admitted that the police had been “dangerously close to being used as an instrument of state.”
“Boris is the life and soul of the party, but he is not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.” Following the 2016 inquest verdict into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, previously censored documents suggesting links between the actions of senior South Yorkshire Police officers at both incidents were published. So why no review? Is this an indication of the
hardening of Amber Rudd’s politics? Maybe. But the fact is that no Conservative Home Secretary would ever sanction a review into Orgreave. There is too much at stake with regards the legacy of Mrs Thatcher. A review would probably discredit the historic actions of the South Yorkshire Police, but no big deal as they have already been shamed by their coverup of Hillsborough. The issue that worries the Conservatives is an investigation into the role of the Government of the time, and what Home Secretary would ever wish to drag up the bitter, confrontational days of 1980s for forensic examination. Tories may be proud of the outcome in which the unions were emasculated, but few would wish the methods to be publicly reviewed!
Soon after, her swing to the right was seemingly confirmed by her decision to block a statutory inquiry or independent review into the ‘Battle of Orgreave’, the violent clash between miners and the police at the height of the Miners Strike in June 1984, described by QC Michael Mansfield as “one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.” Although the event happened over 30 years ago, new evidence recently uncovered meant a review would almost inevitably be called. In 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission reported that there was “evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent coverup of that perjury by senior officers.” Alan
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