Shrewsbury 24 (Release of Papers)

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. A large number of Members want to participate in the debate so I am imposing a time limit of six minutes for each Back-Bench speech, starting immediately. We will see how we go through the afternoon, but it may be necessary for that limit to be reduced further if we do not have enough time to fit everybody in.

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[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I call Dennis Skinner. [Interruption.] I am sorry. I will call the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) next.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Well, that has put the Lib Dems in their place, hasn’t it? I have always wanted to do it. I know Clegg’s got a sour face—[Interruption.]

Anyway, we live in the age of transparency, don’t we? We have transparency coming out of every pore. Every day I turn up in the House of Commons, from all sides I am assailed by people saying, “We need transparency.” At the beginning, I was unsure what it meant; I am sure now. It is a class thing. It applies only to the things that affect us, but it does not give us an inch when we are asking for something from the other side. We can have transparency about hospitals, care homes, schools, and everything else, but not about this. Isn’t it strange that we are being told again today, by this tin-pot coalition, that we cannot have it? [Laughter.] It really is tin-pot, although I know the last Labour Government did not pull their weight either. It has to be put on the record.

But this is a debate about class, and we do not get many of those in here. Every so often, it erupts, and we talk about class. That is what this is. It was the same with Hillsborough, when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) got that debate, and it was the same with Thatcher and the funeral and all the rest of it. I do not want to go into that, but the truth is that it is very rare. Here are a few people who were on the picket line, they ordered a bus from a bus company, and they talk about conspiracies—all the records are there! I know it was not the age of social media, Twitter and God knows what else—if it had been, they would have won, because they would all have had a mobile phone, with a camera, and they could have took some pictures. Yes, it’s about class, and that is why we are here today, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and other colleagues.

I was here in the 1970s, and I could not believe it the moment I got to London: we were on picket lines, and winning—winning! It does not happen very often, so we have to treasure every moment. My father worked for 50 years in the pits, and when we won the 1972 strike, he said, “It’s the first time in my life.” Yet there is all this talk, somehow or other, about workers having power. It is not true, and this is another example where they do not have it, or otherwise the papers would have been released and, what’s more, this whole episode would not have begun. It began because of the climate of 1970 onwards. The establishment, the Heath Government, were defeated by the miners in 1972, after a seven-week strike. It is true there was a bit of pushing and shoving, but by and large it was a relatively peaceful affair. The police were wearing long stockings underneath their trousers. I told Tom Swain, and he said, “I’m getting a pair.” That’s what it was like, by and large.

What happened then? The Upper Clyde shipbuilders had a sit-in and won. Then there was Vic Turner and Bernie Steer saying, “We’re going to put some pickets on down at the docks”—at what is now Covent Garden—and they got put in Pentonville jail. The Industrial Relations Act had just got Royal Assent, but what happened? After Vic Turner was put in jail with his mates, the Official Solicitor had to turn up, representing all the echelons of the establishment, saying, “They won’t purge their own contempt. We’ve got to do it for them.” We said, “Yes, but at a price”, and so they had to kick the Act into the long grass.

In the middle of all this, some people, such as those I should not speak about in the Gallery, decided also to battle for better wages. They had never had great wages, but UCATT and the building workers had had a lot of injuries, so they decided in that climate to take a chance and fight for better wages and conditions. That is all it was. The evidence was there, as we have heard, but the establishment decided that somebody needed a lesson: “We’ll take these on. We lost to the miners. We lost to Upper Clyde. We lost the Industrial Relations Act. We’ve got to have a victory.” That was what this was all about, and let no one kid themselves: when the echelons of the state decide to take action, the judiciary join them, and I do not care what their names are. It has been apparent for so many years, and it is still apparent today.

My time is running out. I compliment all those who have taken part, but I want to pay my final compliment to that face I saw in Lincoln prison, Des Warren, fighting the establishment, and when I call for transparency, it is the face of Des Warren—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

[Sir Bob Russell]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Sir Bob Russell, I apologise about earlier. As the House will know, we alternate between sides. Follow that, in six minutes.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I inform the House that I am reducing the time limit further to five minutes. I am doing my best to fit in all those who want to speak. I ask Members to pay attention and to assist colleagues to make their points; it is not necessary to take five minutes, but five minutes is the maximum from now on.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am now reducing the speaking time limit to four minutes. Everyone who wishes to speak will be able to do so if all Members stick to that limit.

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[Katy Clark]

I am intervening on my hon. Friend because I think that he may need some more time. Does he think that this quotation from Construction News, published on 17 December 1970—a very long time ago—gives some indication of the power and influence of the construction industry? The paper said of a private Christmas dinner organised by McAlpine in 1977:

“Anyone who can hold a private party and make it virtually impossible to get a Cabinet quorum cannot be without influence of friends.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may need more time, but it will come out of the hon. Lady’s time, because the winding-up speeches must start at 2.40 pm.

[John Mann]

The fact is that McAlpine was based in that part of the world, and it is no coincidence that this was picked on.

We know what these people do. They did the same during the miners’ strike. What they do is randomly pick out people and claim conspiracy, which is exactly what they tried to do to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath and others in the anti-apartheid movement. That is the mindset of some of these people. They believe that they have some sort of supreme knowledge, and then they claim to defend freedom.

These people are not the friends of freedom; these people are the enemies of freedom. That is why those Johannesburg principles were written, and that is why they apply not just to South Africa under apartheid, not just to North Korea and the lunatic running it, not just to China and the repression of working people there, but to this country and to western democracies. Freedom is about the right to go about your business. It is about the right to engage in protest, including industrial protest. It is about the right to hold your Government to account, and to ensure that if there are documents out there, they are brought to light. Such documents are already slowly emerging. We have seen the documents about Hillsborough, and in future we will see documents about Orgreave and the miners’ strike, and many, many more. There is an information revolution going on in this country, because people are fed up with the secrecy of the state and those misfits around it who set up organisations claiming conspiracies when there is no conspiracy because it suits their political ends—and some of them clearly even participate in events like this but are still elected to this Parliament.

If this is a coalition Government, this Liberal Minister needs to demonstrate that he is part of the coalition. The Liberals have always told us they stand for individual freedoms. Well, prove it; release these documents. These people who have had to fight against this for years deserve it, but there is a bigger cause, too: the rest of us. This is about defining freedom in this country. That is what this debate is about, and why this Liberal Minister has to act.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am taking the time limit down to three minutes to get three more speakers in before the wind-ups start.

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That this House is seriously concerned at the decision of the Government to refuse to release papers related to the building dispute in 1972 and subsequent prosecutions of the workers known as the Shrewsbury 24 and calls on it to reverse this position as a matter of urgency.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I ask Members to leave the Chamber quietly and quickly so that we can start the next important Back-Bench debate.