Ken Capstick (The lies binding Hillsborough to Orgreave, 6 May) speaks eloquently of connections between the two events and the imperative that, now truth is established over Hillsborough, we need the truth over Orgreave.
I wish, however, to point out a signal difference between the two police actions. At Hillsborough the poorly led South Yorkshire force first responded to events incompetently and then conspired to cover up its incompetence. At Orgreave the police are suspected of conspiring in advance, and initiating the confrontations. Having planned in advance, as later at Hillsborough, they stood accused of conspiring afterwards to cover up.
Initiating a crisis is patently more serious than responding incompetently to a crisis. That this is believed to have been the case at Orgreave raises even more serious questions of complicity at higher levels than South Yorkshire. How did the situation arise that senior officers apparently thought they could behave provocatively and outside the law? Who was giving them nods and winks? Was there government involvement?
Dr John Hull
Sheffield
• Perhaps the Orgreave inquiry could run in parallel with one into events at Saltley in 1972. There, intimidating flying pickets closed the coke depot in pursuit of a 43% rise for miners, setting in train the eventual fall of Edward Heath’s government, and the March 1974 capitulation to the NUM by the newly elected (only just) Labour employment secretary Michael Foot with another 35% that helped feed the inflationary spiral of the 70s that in turn led to the trade union self-immolation in the winter of discontent that prefaced the election of Mrs Thatcher.
That other inquiry might find that the left had created the perfect storm for the Thatcher government with its 144 majority; only a fool would have taken her on in early 1984 and only a fool would have called out the miners without a vote, and only a fool would have divided the workforce and the families and communities within it. It took politically motivated Arthur Scargill to challenge her and he had much to answer for thereon. However at Ken Capstick’s inquiry, Scargill would have the advantage. He’s not dead.
Charles Foster
Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
