First they came for the soldiers, who so valiantly risked their lives serving Queen and Country against the IRA.

Shamefully, members of the special forces and other troops posted to Northern Ireland during the Troubles are still being hounded through the courts while terrorists issued with ‘letters of comfort’ by the British Government and freed from jail early enjoy a care free retirement.

Now it’s the police who must take their turn in the ducking stool. The Government has announced a public inquiry into the so-called ‘Battle of Orgreave’ during the miners’ strike in 1984.

Home Secretary Pixie Balls-Cooper said it is necessary to uncover the ‘truth’ behind the clashes between 4,500 coppers and 8,000 flying pickets who attempted to close down a Yorkshire coking plant.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a public inquiry into the so-called ‘Battle of Orgreave’ during the miners’ strike in 1984

What she means is that goodness-knows-how-many millions of pounds we haven’t got is about to frittered away with the sole purpose of rewriting history and trashing the police and the Tories. The clue was in Pixie’s statement as she padded across the former battlefield for the cameras: ‘I think the miners’ 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.’

It’s yet another excuse to dance on Mrs Thatcher’s grave and undermine confidence in the forces of law and order. The ‘truth’ won’t come into it.

This will be just the latest multi-million-pound show trial, along with the long-running Bloody Sunday circus – nothing to do with the IRA, guv – and the current Covid Inquiry, set up to find Boris to blame for absolutely everything.

Trebles all round for Surkeir’s mates in the Left-wing legal fraternity, with the ubiquitous Michael Mansfield leading the charge.

The inquiry will be chaired by the trendy Bishop of Sheffield, ‘Pete’ Wilcox, who has declared it is important for ‘community healing’. So no bias there, then.

Ambulance men carry away an injured man after the clash outside Orgreave Coking Plant, near Rotherham

No wonder the current NUM president, Chris Kitchen, said: ‘We we are over the moon. We’re hoping the inquiry will show that our dispute, which we believe was industrial, was political, orchestrated from No 10, or higher up the food chain towards No 10. And that the police were used as a paramilitary force to push a political objective.’

Just like the Leveson Inquisition into the Free Press, the verdict has already been decided in advance. Old Bill bad, miners good.

Pixie clearly buys into the romanticised Billy Elliot nonsense about the strike. Listen to the Far Left and it was all about saving ‘jobs, pits, communities’ and advancing gay rights, so that a son of the coalfields could become a ballet dancer, despite the cruel ‘Tory cuts’.

Then again, Pixie was only 15 in 1984, no doubt wearing a ‘Frankie Says Relax’ T-shirt and Blu-Tacking posters of Wham! and Nik Kershaw to her bedroom wall.

Her view of the strike – a wicked Tory attack on hard-working, Hovis-commercial communities – has been swallowed whole by the gullible young reporters on the rolling news channels, who weren’t even born back then.

Those of us who were around at the time see things rather differently. I wasn’t at Orgreave, but as a 30-year-old industrial correspondent on London’s Evening Standard I covered the miners’ strike from start to finish.

Far from being a violent Conservative Government putsch against a down-trodden working class, the strike was NUM leader Arthur Scargill’s magnum opus - a deliberate attempt to use industrial muscle to bring down an elected government by force.

It was called without the secret ballot required by law, and enforced by thuggery. Scargill sent gangs of pickets across Britain to intimidate both miners and union members in associated industries to down tools.

To their credit, Nottinghamshire’s independent-minded miners refused to play ball. This led to serious clashes between them and flying pickets from Yorkshire – Forest v Wednesday football hooliganism dressed up as politics.

Scargill saw Orgreave as a re-run of the Battle of Saltley Gate in 1972, when NUM pickets combined with local trades unionists to shut down a fuel depot in Birmingham during a previous miners’ strike, which crippled Grocer Heath’s Tory administration.

Only this time, the Government was ready. Under the late, great Norman Tebbit, the police were prepared.

Coppers from all over the country, the Met especially, were primed to face down Scargill’s thugs. Battle duly commenced and after a series of nasty skirmishes, the forces of law and order prevailed.

It wasn’t pretty. Police charging on horseback and pickets hurling rocks made for almost medieval scenes. But the police didn’t start it. The blame was entirely down to Scargill, a revolutionary Communist who thought he could prevail through violence.

Yes, decent people were caught up in the mayhem. And, yes, the tendency of South Yorkshire Police to fabricate evidence, and whose credibility was destroyed by their Hillsborough lies, led to the collapse of a number of trials.

None of this, however, should detract from who bears the responsibility. That alone lies with Scargill.

If it’s lies you’re interested him, look no further. Of course, miners were right to be worried about the loss of their livelihoods. But the ‘Tory’ pit closures weren’t unprecedented, they were merely an acknowledgement of a dying industry.

The truth is that Labour Prime Ministers Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson shut down more mines than Mrs Thatcher.

Scargill wasn’t trying to save jobs, he was trying to bring down a Conservative government by extra-parliamentary means – using his NUM members as shock troops.

'Her view of the strike – a wicked Tory attack on hard-working, Hovis-commercial communities – has been swallowed whole by the gullible young reporters on the rolling news channels, who weren’t even born back then'

'Far from being a violent Conservative government putsch against a down-trodden working class, the strike was NUM leader Arthur Scargill’s magnum opus'. Pictured: A man holds weapons thrown at police at Orgreave 

Not that Scargill suffered any hardship. He was last seen claiming 33 grand a year from the NUM for a subsidised flat in London’s Barbican, to go with his sprawling property near Barnsley.

My old mate Eric Hammond, moderate (alright, then, Right-wing) leader of the electricians’ union, once described the miners as ‘lions led by donkeys’ in a famous First World War analogy about soldiers and generals.

He added: ‘Arthur Scargill went into the strike with a small house and a big union. He came out with a small union and a big house.’

The great irony is that if the pits hadn’t closed under Thatcher, they’d have been shut down by the Net Zero zealotry of this Labour Government, of which Pixie Balls-Cooper is a prominent member.

Sadly, though, this generation would rather re-litigate the past than take responsibility for the mess they have created.

Surkeir’s parasitical contemporaries in the legal trade are already crawling all over the Iraq and Afghan wars. They are filling their boots with refreshers from Bloody Sunday and Covid.

What next – putting the late RAF hero Bomber Harris on trial over Dresden? Holding a public inquiry into ‘war crimes’ allegedly committed in the Falklands? Investigating the late Detective Superintendent Nipper Reid for arresting the Kray Twins?

Why not? They are even prepared to sacrifice coppers as well as soldiers on the altar of their Left-wing vanities.

The police who stood up to Scargill’s boot boys, like the troops who faced down the IRA, deserve our gratitude – not retrospective persecution by our pygmy political class, including the ridiculous ‘Syrian refugees welcome here’ Pixie Balls-Cooper.