“I would like to reiterate my full support for workers who are fighting for a real pay rise”

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Peredur Owen Griffiths, who represents Plaid Cymru, is one of four regional Senedd Members serving the South Wales East region.

There has been much said about the recent industrial action taken by rail workers over the past couple of weeks. I recognise that the strike has inconvenienced many people who rely on the train to get around.

Despite the difficulties it has caused, I would like to reiterate my full support for workers who are fighting for a real pay rise. The Tory government’s offer to workers would be swallowed three times over by the inflation their mismanagement of the economy has brought on.

Plaid Cymru has been clear in its support of rail workers and, unlike many Labour MPs, have not been told to stay away from picket lines for fear of attracting the ire of right-wing tabloids.

Anti-trade union laws mean that picket lines look very different to how they once used to. There are strict limits of how many striking workers can be at picket lines – the Code of Practice on picketing says usually there should be no more than six people outside an entrance to a workplace.

This is in stark contrast to the scenes we saw in the 1984/85 miners’ strike when picket lines would often be filled with hundreds of workers who had downed tools. Last weekend, there was a significant anniversary for an ugly and bloody episode that stands out as a pivotal moment in the miners’ strike.

Saturday marked 38 years since the confrontation took place between police and miners at Orgreave in South Yorkshire. In what was dubbed ‘the Battle of Orgreave’, miners –  many of whom had travelled from Wales – were unusually welcomed by police to the area before being set upon relentlessly by a uniformed mob. 

Truncheons were used to crack skulls and break limbs and people were charged down on horseback. This was no battle – it was a punishment beating orchestrated by Thatcher’s Tory Government and carried out by the British State.

The level of indiscriminate violence used that day on miners fighting to save their industry and the future of their communities still leaves a bitter taste in mouths of many. The trumped up charges that the state pursued afterwards against a group of miners – which included at least one miner from Caerphilly County Borough – predictably crumbled when tested in court.

The fact there were no repercussions for officers – and senior officers in particular – for the events at Orgreave has led to some in the Justice for Hillsborough campaign to believe there were clear parallels between these two incidents involving South Yorkshire Police. Margaret Aspinall, the chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, once said: “Ninety-six people died as a result of Orgreave. This police force was brutal and corrupt, and if they had been brought to task after that, Hillsborough might not have happened.”

The British State should not delay any longer the truth and justice that has been denied to so many of our communities for 38 years and counting. There should be an independent inquiry into the bloody and shameful events at Orgreave. It is perhaps not surprising that this has not happened under a series of Tory Governments but we cannot forget that this much-needed inquiry did not occur in the 13 years of three successive Labour Governments.

Westminster MPs – both Labour and Tory – would do well to remember the well-known legal maxim that ‘justice delayed, is justice denied.’