Related: IPCC will not investigate Orgreave police action during miners' strike  The Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham has called on the government to set up a public inquiry or Hillsborough-style independent panel to examine all documents relating to events at Orgreave during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, as former miners accused South Yorkshire police of covering up criminal misconduct by some of their officers.  In a letter to David Cameron, Burnham noted that he worked “very closely” with the prime minister on the Hillsborough process, which led to the inquests into the 96 deaths in 1989 being quashed after 21 years and two new investigations into alleged police malpractice.  Burnham said events at the infamous “battle of Orgreave” on 18 June 1984 justified the same approach, following an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report that identified evidence of police brutality, as well as perjury and perverting the course of justice in the subsequent failed prosecutions of 95 miners.  “There is no time limit on justice,” Burnham wrote. “Hillsborough showed that a form of justice can still be served, even if the injustice happened decades ago.”  The home secretary, Theresa May, said in a statement that she would consider any request to set up a public inquiry into Orgreave.  Although the IPCC decided it would not formally mount an investigation due to the historic nature of the Orgreave events, it found that senior South Yorkshire police officers in 1988-90 acknowledged that “many officers” had been excessively violent, and that there was evidence some committed perjury. But the senior officers never disclosed that they recognised malpractice had taken place, nor mounted any disciplinary or criminal investigation.  The IPCC said that “raises doubts about the ethical standards and complicity of officers high up [in South Yorkshire police]”. The senior officers’ withholding of the information about possible perjury having been committed, and the failure to investigate that, and allegations about “improper treatment” of miners at Orgreave, may themselves indicate that senior officers perverted the course of justice and committed misconduct in a public office, the IPCC concluded.  The current South Yorkshire police chief constable, David Crompton, who referred the Orgreave issues to the IPCC in November 2012, told the Guardian he acknowledged the report “would tend to indicate malpractice took place and that the force was not as open and transparent as they should have been”. Crompton said the lesson for modern policing was not to behave in the same way.  Barbara Jackson, who was on strike during 1984-85 as an office worker for the National Coal Board and is now secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, said the IPCC report had exposed a coverup by South Yorkshire police of malpractice it knew had taken place.  “This reaffirms the need for all documents relating to the events at Orgreave to be disclosed now and for a full public inquiry,” she said. “We will be making a formal request for that to Theresa May and we welcome her statement that she will consider it.”  Related: It’s 30 years since the miners’ strike. But justice for Orgreave shouldn’t have a time limit | Owen Jones  The IPCC examined documents relating to Orgreave following coverage in the Guardian and a BBC documentary in November 2012 which highlighted the historic allegations of excessive violence by police against miners picketing the coking plant near Rotherham and allegations that officers lied in the 1985 trial of 95 miners for riot and unlawful assembly, which collapsed after police were cross-examined.  In 1990, South Yorkshire police paid 39 miners £425,000 to settle claims for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution without admitting liability.  The correspondence which, the IPCC said, showed that senior South Yorkshire police officers acknowledged malpractice had been committed, was between the force and its lawyers when facing these civil claims. The IPCC report says that South Yorkshire police were prompted to settle the case by the knowledge that “many officers did ‘over re-act [sic]’” on the day, and that there was “evidence of perjury relating to at least two arrests”.  The force’s solicitor, who is unnamed, records an officer saying he was reluctant to provide a written report of what he knew because “there would appear to be some opposition at [the force’s Sheffield headquarters] Snig Hill to our providing evidence which could cause the case to be lost”.  The solicitor made a note, according to the IPCC report, saying: “I did not want to give anything away at this stage. Even if some one [sic] or more of these plaintiffs had not been treated properly by the police officers and indeed even if there was some perjury in statements it remained our argument that they were present at a riot.”  These documents, and the revelation that senior South Yorkshire police officers acknowledged privately there had been excessive police violence and perjury, have never been disclosed before. When the force settled the case in 1990, they did not mention any such acceptance of wrongdoing and said the settlement was mostly done to preserve relations with mining communities, and move on.  Raju Bhatt, the solicitor who pursued the civil claim on behalf of the miners, said he believed the IPCC report established that the police perpetrated a coverup at the time, which should be investigated.  “It also shows an abdication by the South Yorkshire police chief constable at the time of his legal duty to investigate misconduct by his officers of which he was aware,” Bhatt said. “That undermines the rule of law and everything that the police are supposed to stand for.”
Labour leadership contender tells PM there should be further investigation of confrontation between striking miners and police in 1984 after watchdog’s report