A SENIOR police officer said former Labour leader Neil Kinnock contacted him during the 1984-5 miners’ strike and “spoke warmly in support of the police in their difficult task” according to a formerly “secret” Home Office file. Kinnock’s conversation was then reported to the Home Office, which was dealing with many complaints about excessive policing in the strike.

The “conversation between HMI Mr Woodcock and Mr Neil Kinnock” forms a “note for the record” in the Home Office miners’ strike file released — after many delays — to the National Archives.

According to the note, Kinnock, then leader of the Labour Party, “asked to see” former South Wales chief constable John Woodcock. According to Woodcock, who was then a member of the police inspectorate, during a “relaxed conversation” Kinnock talked about “police matters” in the “NUM dispute.”

The note, written on October 24 1984, says “Mr Kinnock spoke warmly in support of the police in their difficult task.” The then Labour leader did ask “some questions about particular instances, including the recent difficulties with South Yorkshire over horses and dogs.” Horses and dogs were used by police throughout the dispute, notably at the Battle of Orgreave in South Yorkshire. The note says that while Kinnock raised the questions, he “seemed contented with all the explanations” for the tactics offered by the top cop.

I asked (now Lord) Kinnock about the meeting. He said that he approached Woodcock because of “his manifest commitment to community policing” and was “sure that he would share the concern of other police officers at the way in which the conduct of policing of the dispute in some areas was producing deep and lasting damage to relations between police forces and the coalfield communities which they served.”

He added that “officers had made it clear to me and to many others that they were ‘the meat in the sandwich’ and were disturbed by the political conditions which had produced that situation. I recall that Mr Woodcock understood the point.”

However, he said that “the note does not convey the fact that my reaction to ‘explanations’ then and at other times was to emphasise the gravity of the feelings which were obviously being aroused in the communities by such methods. I certainly do not recall being ‘contented’ by the ‘explanations’; or with the continuing situation.”

The file shows that the Home Office was simultaneously dealing with complaints from other Labour MPs and bodies like the National Council for Civil Liberties about excessive force by picket line police so it seems to have seen Kinnock’s intervention as a helpful piece of behind-the-scenes support. Kinnock said it would be “unjustified and misleading” to see his conversation as an attempt by him to bolster the Home Office stand on police behaviour, pointing to his public speeches at the time that condemned both police and picket violence.

In one high-profile speech from 1984 as leader of the Labour Party, Kinnock said: “I do condemn the violence of stone-throwers and battering-ram carriers, and I condemn the violence of cavalry charges and truncheon groups and shield-bangers.”

However, by the time the report of his meeting with Woodcock reached the Home Office any criticism of the police had been stripped out. The government seems to have treated the meeting as supportive, regardless of Kinnock’s intentions. The note of their talk was passed around the Home Office: the notes are unclear, but it looks it was also passed to the ministers.

The “secret” file shows that, thanks to pressure from the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL) over police violence, roadblocks and dubious prosecutions, the Home Office seriously considered an official inquiry into miners’ strike policing back in October 1984.

An October 1984 note from then home secretary Leon Brittan’s private secretary is headlined “Home Affairs Select Committee: Possible Inquiry into Policing of the Miners’ Dispute.”

It says: “[At] the Home Secretary’s lunch at Admiralty House on Friday, the chief constable of Nottinghamshire, Mr McLachlan, mentioned that he had been reflecting on how best to respond to the invitation from the National Council of Civil Liberties to give evidence to their inquiry into the policing of the miners’ dispute.

“This had led him to conclude that it would be helpful if there were to be an inquiry by the select committee along these lines, to which he could give evidence instead. He asked the Home Secretary whether it might be possible to encourage the select committee to examine this area.”

Brittan wanted more advice from his private secretary on the effect of an inquiry by a select committee of MPs. Brittan “sees the attraction from the police point of view of an enquiry which could establish without doubt that they had acted properly during the dispute.

“On the other hand, he recognises that a select committee enquiry, which could not begin until after the dispute was over, might tend to prolong the friction between police and the local community at a time when efforts should be concentrated on restoring good relations.”

A note of advice from officials to Brittan suggest that “an enquiry of some kind would be helpful and should contribute to the rehabilitation phase.” However, officials say with a select committee “there will be a danger of ‘minority reports’ and too much politicising of the report” — Labour members of the committee could have made a much more critical minority report.

Instead Home Office officials suggested “a carefully constructed inquiry chaired, perhaps, by Sir C Clothier.” Cecil Clothier showed he could be quite tough with the police when he later became the first chairman of the Police Complaints Authority. An official inquiry into miners’ strike policing headed by Clothier may have been revealing. However, it was not to be. An official note shows that the inquiry was abandoned. A later document says: “I see no lacuna which an inquiry would fill.”

With the government still resisting an inquiry into Orgreave policing, it is striking that Home Office officials seriously considered one in 1984. The Labour front bench now supports such an inquiry. But the fact that the Home Office was, as the file shows, not under pressure from the Labour leadership to call an inquiry back then must have made it easier to abandon the idea.