Apples and Oranges

I'm afraid I don't buy the comparisons that some people are trying to draw between the victims of the Hillsborough Disaster - and the Miners' Strike in 1984/85.

To my mind any comparison between the two events is completely overblown - for two important reasons.

Firstly, the Hillsborough Disaster was the subject of a cross-party, non-political campaign for many years led by the families of the victims - before justice was finally served by an Independent Inquiry earlier this year.

The Hillsborough Inquiry exposed an unprecedented level of police corruption - in the aftermath of the disaster - including the widespread falsification of police witness statements.

The same can't be said for striking miners - there certainly hasn't been a similar trade union led campaign over the past twenty seven years - complaining that individual miners were 'fitted up' by the police - and the courts.

If there had been, I might think differently - because I actively supported the miners strike all the way through that terrible period - until the dispute came to a sad if rather predictable end.

I lived and worked in London at the time - and was a regular visitor to the striking miners in the coal fields of Kent.

But mass picketing and industrial muscle proved to be poor substitutes for popular public support - which slowly drained away as the miners UK leader - Arthur Scargill - set his face against a ballot of NUM members.

The end result is that a once mighty and proud trade union has all but disappeared - along with the mining industry.

My second reservation is that I have yet to hear any proper evidence to back up allegations of police corruption - leading to people being wrongly convicted for their activities during the strike.

I did hear a Labour politician claim that certain (unnamed) miners were accused and  convicted during the strike - when they were, in fact, nowhere near the scene of their alleged crimes - twenty miles away apparently, if I heard correctly.

Now I took this claim with a great big pinch of salt I have to say - because at the time these mining areas were big Labour fiefdoms - stuffed full of more Labour MPs than you could shake a stick at - and represented on all sides by majority Labour councils.

Yet no one appears to have been sufficiently bothered to make a big public fuss until almost 30 years has elapsed - which I find rather odd.

So never mind another public inquiry, my question is: 

'Why haven't all these Labour MPs and local councillors been jumping up and down - and making a terrible noise all this time - instead of trying to pass the buck on to someone else in the hope they will do all the heavy lifting?'

Many miners were victimised in the aftermath of the strike - that's for sure - sacked ruthlessly by employers when there was no need to treat people in such a fashion - unless they had been convicted of crimes of violence or intimidation.  

But that's not a good reason for turning the spotlight on the behaviour of the police in Scotland - you might as well call for a public inquiry into the conduct of the whole dispute - which would lead precisely nowhere, of course.

Because while Hillsborough and the Miners' Strike might both arouse great passions - for understandable reasons - the reality is that in Scotland they have little, if anything, in common.