Scottish Government urged to pay financial compensation to striking miners through justice underspend

dailyrecord.co.uk:

SNP ministers have been called on to use an underspend to pay compensation to miners wronged during the bitter strike of the 1980s.

Labour MSP Richard Leonard believes the cash should be used to back up a pardon that has already been promised. The strike, which lasted between 1984 and 1985, saw the miners go head-to-head against a Thatcher Government determined to close pits.

Many former pit workers lost their jobs and were blacklisted after they were arrested by police and given criminal convictions.A new law, which will issue an automatic pardon for miners convicted of offences like breach of peace during a picket or on a demo, cleared its first Holyrood hurdle recently.The symbolic move would also apply to miners whose conviction related to travelling for the purposes of taking part in a picket.Leonard, a former Scottish Labour leader, is trying to amend the legislation so it also includes compensation.On this day in 1984 a former miner called Jim Tierney was one of 290 pulled over by the police at Stepps, while going about their lawful business, and arrested and detained.It wasn’t the only time that Jim was lifted during the miners’ strike, with an incident later that year leading to him being jailed for a crime he did not commit, sacked from his job and blacklisted.Jim’s story is far from unique.

There are other similar tales of injustice, sackings and blacklisting. Of rights lost, families torn apart, communities destroyed.This lived experience of working-class history illustrates why, when MSPs debate the miners’ strike pardons bill again today, I will ask the Scottish Government to establish a compensation scheme to help heal the wounds that have remained open for almost four decades.Jim lives in the