by Julian Mann, Christian Today
How has a serving Church of England bishop got time to chair a statutory public inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ in the 1984 Miners’ Strike?
The Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, apparently has, despite the challenges of low clergy morale and dwindling congregations that the national Church faces. In 2019, he tried to persuade the then Conservative Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, to let him head up an inquiry into the clash between police and striking coal miners at the Orgreave Coking plant in South Yorkshire.
Javid turned him down but when Labour got elected last year with a manifesto commitment to launch an Orgreave inquiry, Bishop Wilcox found himself preaching to the choir. On July 21, when Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced the inquiry to be chaired by Bishop Wilcox, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote a piece headlined “First they came for the soldiers, now it’s the coppers … Orgreave is another excuse to dance on Mrs Thatcher’s grave”.