“NO-ONE died or was banged up, so move along. There’s nothing to see here” — that summarises Amber Rudd’s refusal to order an inquiry into Orgreave.

The Home Secretary’s rejection of this demand is not simply “a significant disappointment” to the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, as she acknowledges. It is yet another instalment in the sorry saga of unrelenting conspiracy, lies and cover-up carried out by South Yorkshire Police, aided and abetted by successive governments.

Rudd’s announcement fits the traditional Establishment response like a glove.
It was all a long time ago, there have been significant changes to how policing is overseen, the policing landscape is

fundamentally different, which means few lessons to be learned and no justification for an inquiry.
She might be on stronger ground if Orgreave had been a one-off example of police taking the law into their own hands, but it wasn’t.

Orgreave epitomised a year-long conspiracy by government, police, media and security services to smash the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and destroy miners’ jobs and communities.

It is true that no miners were killed by police at Orgreave, but it was more by luck than judgement that more NUM members didn’t join union martyrs David Jones and Joe Green on June 18 1984.

One former Merseyside police officer, who was deployed to Orgreave, has already disclosed that senior ranks told their men to use “as much force as possible.”

They honoured their orders to the full in what the right-wing media called a battle but was really an assiduously planned ambush against striking miners in T-shirts, jeans and trainers by a tooled-up force in riot gear backed up by club-swinging cavalry.

Injuries suffered by miners on the day were nothing compared with the fate 95 of them faced through a legal conspiracy to fit up as many as possible on charges of riot.

Riot was punishable by up to life imprisonment in 1984 and who could doubt that judges were prepared to hand out lengthy sentences as a lesson to all trade unionists?

They were denied the opportunity because the charges had to be thrown out when it became clear that police witnesses had colluded in writing their reports to ensure that they all told the same lies.

Two South Yorkshire Police senior officers and a police solicitor involved in the shenanigans over Orgreave were also implicated in the Hillsborough inquiry that finally delivered justice for the families of the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death in Sheffield five years after Orgreave.

Justice for the 96 was denied several times, but campaigners refused to accept that justice was too good for them.

Orgreave campaigners will be as dogged in their pursuit of truth and justice as the Hillsborough families were and they can count on backing from the JF96 families.

Rudd’s “no dead, no long jail sentences” comment trivialises the torment of working people who suffered a year on strike, lost their jobs, their standard of living and their pit village communities.

They didn’t experience these losses through an act of God. Powerful people conspired to rob them because they feared the power of solidarity.

Rudd has followed Theresa May, her predecessor as home secretary, in denying justice, but their King Canute impression will not hold back the tide of public opinion.

A public inquiry is essential to lift the lid on who planned the Orgreave ambush, who decided to fit up innocent men for riot and who authorised destruction of incriminating evidence.