A COUNCILLOR who witnessed first-hand brutal clashes between miners and police at Orgreave will ask for the support of colleagues to demand a government rethink on holding a public inquiry.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd told MPs last October that a public inquiry into policing at Orgreave in June 1984 was ‘not in the public interest’.

But former mine worker Coun Mick Stowe isn’t satisfied with that and on Thursday he will propose a motion at the full council meeting to call on the Home Secretary to review her decision.

Coun Stowe, a former union delegate at the Elsecar NCB Workshops who later worked at Shafton NCB Workshops, is hoping it will be given full support.

“This is about concerns from the coal fields - which Barnsley is the centre of - around the Home Secretary’s decision not to have a full inquiry into the issues of Orgreave during the miners’ strike.”

Read more in this weeks Barnsley Chronicle