![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/69467sp_385w_217h_50x_40y.jpg\")
Bishop Pete Wilcox\u00a0(Photo: Diocese of Sheffield)<\/p>\n Bishop Pete Wilcox\u00a0(Photo: Diocese of Sheffield)<\/p>\n
How has a serving Church of England bishop got time to chair a statutory public inquiry into the \u2018Battle of Orgreave\u2019 in the 1984 Miners\u2019 Strike?<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u00a0to the choir<\/a>. On July 21, when Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced the inquiry to be chaired by Bishop Wilcox,\u00a0Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote a piece headlined<\/a> \u201cFirst they came for the soldiers, now it\u2019s the coppers … Orgreave is another excuse to dance on Mrs Thatcher\u2019s grave\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in 1984, Littlejohn was a young industrial correspondent for London\u2019s\u00a0Evening Standard. In his\u00a0Mail\u00a0piece, he described the Orgreave clash in which fortunately no one died:<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t pretty. Police charging on horseback and pickets hurling rocks made for almost medieval scenes. But the police didn\u2019t start it. The blame was entirely down to (Arthur) Scargill (then leader of the National Union of Mineworkers), a revolutionary communist who thought he could prevail through violence.\u201d<\/p>\n Littlejohn was scathing about Bishop Wilcox\u2019s involvement: \u201cThe inquiry will be chaired by the trendy Bishop of Sheffield, \u2018Pete\u2019 Wilcox, who has declared it is important for \u2018community healing\u2019. So no bias there, then.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Guido Fawkes\u00a0political website also weighed in on July 21: \u201cOver the weekend the government announced it will capitulate to the demands of left-wing campaigners and launch a national statutory inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave.\u201d<\/p>\n Branding the inquiry\u00a0\u201ca taxpayer-funded exercise in Thatcher-bashing\u201d,\u00a0Guido\u00a0quoted Yvette Cooper: \u201cI think the miners\u2019 strike still has deep scars across coalfield communities, and the decisions made at that time – the broadest decisions that were taken by the Thatcher government in the 1980s – the scars can still be felt across the coalfields.\u201d<\/p>\n