Abstract
This paper is an invited response to an article in The New Statesman based on an interview with Joe Rollin from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) (Lloyd, 2025). In that article, Rollin reflects on the announcement that a public inquiry will (finally) take place on the violent confrontation between striking miners and police at Orgreave coking plant in June 1984, the so-called Battle of Orgreave – an event which Rollin rightly describes as more of an ambush than a battle. On one hand, this is a significant victory for the OTJC, an organisation which has campaigned long and hard for a public inquiry, even if what happened at Orgreave – and why – is already quite clear. The New Statesman article then deals with the riots of summer 2024, which spread across much of England following the murder of three young girls by the British-Rwandan, Axel Rudakubana. Perhaps the worst of these incidents took place at the Holiday Inn Express, a hotel accommodating asylum seekers on the site of the former Manvers Main Colliery near Wath-upon-Dearne in South Yorkshire, where protestors attempted to storm and then burn down the building, and many who took part were arrested and subsequently jailed.