No public inquiry will be held into the Battle of Orgreave, the home secretary has announced.
Amber Rudd yesterday revealed there will be no statutory inquiry or independent review into the notorious 1984 clash between police and miners.
The clash between South Yorkshire police and pickets at the Orgreave coke works left more than 100 people injured with 95 miners arrested.
Rudd said she made the “difficult decision” because “ultimately there were no deaths or wrongful convictions” resulting from the violent encounter in 1984.
She acknowledged her decision would be a “significant disappointment” to the campaigners.
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign – which has called for a public inquiry into the conduct of the police at the time – had demanded action from Rudd.
Campaign chair Barbara Jackson said: “We want her to be her own person… and to stop being frozen in the past.”
In a written ministerial statement, Rudd said: “This has been a difficult decision to make, and one which I have thought about very carefully. I have now concluded that there is not a sufficient basis for me to instigate either a statutory inquiry or an independent review.
“I know that this decision will come as a significant disappointment to the Orgreave Truth And Justice Campaign and its supporters and I have set out in a letter to them today the detailed reasons for my decision which include the following points.
“Despite the forceful accounts and arguments provided by the campaigners and former miners who were present that day, about the effect that these events have had on them, ultimately there were no deaths or wrongful convictions.
“The campaigners say that had the consequences of the events at Orgreave been addressed properly at the time, the tragic events at Hillsborough would never have happened five years later.
“That is not a conclusion which I believe can be reached with any certainty.”
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “It is a grave injustice that there will be no statutory inquiry into the battle of Orgreave.”
“We know the South Yorkshire Police lied about what happened at Hillsborough yet only five years earlier the same South Yorkshire Police, many of the same commanders, behaved in a very similar way at Orgreave.”
A number of Labour MPs criticised the decision. Labour’s national campaign coordinator Jon Trickett said: “I represent many men who were at Orgreave. Justice hidden is justice denied. Labour will set up an Inquiry as soon as elected to office.”
Rudd stressed that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is working with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to determine whether material related to the policing at Orgreave is relevant to the criminal investigations following the Hillsborough inquests.