"Extremely disturbing" development on the Orgreave controversy

The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, which has been campaigning for years to have the episode, which resulted in violence and saw dozens of innocent pickets charged with serious offences later dropped at court, has discovered Northumbria Police no longer hold any records.

Their discovery came as the result of a Freedom of Information request and is in stark contrast to South Yorkshire Police, where former Police and Crime Commissioner Dr Alan Billings took steps to ensure all that force’s Orgreave documents were digitised – allowing easy access should they be needed for an inquiry.

In 2016, the Northumbria force confirmed they held documents, according to the Truth and Justice campaign.

But the FOI request confirmed they destroyed any remaining documentation about the strike and Orgreave in April last year.

Kate Flannery, Secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, said: “This is extremely disturbing news.

“We are now understandably worried about how many other police forces may have recently destroyed or intend to destroy important information that would be very relevant in an Orgreave inquiry or investigation.”

The destruction of the documentation came months before Labour’s landslide General Election win, when the party had a manifesto commitment to investigate Orgreave, should they gain power.

Kevin Horne, a miner arrested at Orgreave on June 18, 1984, said: “Any argument that documents and records were simply destroyed on the basis of time passed does not make sense given that Northumbria police and other police forces had by April 2024, already kept the documents for nearly 40 years.”

In 2016, the Home Affairs Select Committee asked all police forces involved in Orgreave to provide documentation for archiving by South Yorkshire Police.

At that time, Northumbria responded, stating they had papers covering the “management and logistics” of the deployment of police special units, a report by a superintendent about timetable of June 18 and documents about an alleged assault on a picket by a police officer, filmed by TV cameras.