Public enquiry

Rosie Winterton MP describes those Miners and supporters gathering at Orgreave as pickets.

The legislation in place covering such gatherings refers to lawful picketing. Clearly, on numbers alone this gathering could be regarded as unlawful.

By consequence those taking apart could be construed to be in breach of statute and common law giving the police powers of arrest.

Any arrest may be accompanied by reasonable force to activate that arrest, that force being reasonable to facilitate that arrest and in response to the circumstances present at the time.

I would support the views offered by Rosie Winterton MP but let it not be aligned to the Hillsborough enquiry.

The circumstances are different in that I believe the picketing of the Orgeave site was unlawful and was rightly dealt with as a public order incident of some magnitude.

That said there may have been failures in that process which have to be highlighted and would probably support the argument of those wishing for a public enquiry.

Dennis A Atkin

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