Chamber and committees

Thank you very much—that is really helpful. I know that David Bell wants to come in, and I am happy to hear from you. However, I also want to pick up on something that you said earlier, and maybe you can address that point as well.

In relation to Michelle Thomson’s questions on SNIB, you mentioned—Steven Heddle referred to this, too—strategic decisions around net zero ambitions. Will you tease out for us a little bit about what we need to do to ensure that we can get the legislation that we need: that is, legislation that is open and flexible enough to allow us to make the regional or local strategic decisions that we need to make around industrial strategy, never mind anything else?

Good morning and happy new year to everybody. I thank the witnesses for being with us this morning. I am sorry that we cannot meet in person.

As Pam Duncan-Glancy and Fulton MacGregor did, I express my solidarity with the miners, their families and the communities that were affected and which continue to be affected by what happened in the 1980s. I was not in the country at the time; I was growing up in Zimbabwe, but the strike permeated our media in southern Africa.

Like Fulton MacGregor, I think that the bill is long overdue and I look forward to supporting its progress through the Parliament over the next wee while. We have had quite a lot of discussion about the scope of its definition of “miner” and the constraints placed on which offences are included. I thank Jim Phillips for outlining some of his critiques of those constraints. We will return to them. I was going to explore them a bit further but they have been covered, so I will turn to justice issues.

Bob Young and Alex Bennett mentioned that they had been dismissed as strikers. Alex Bennett said in his opening remarks that he had been arrested. I ask them to describe for us their experience of the police and the justice system.

Thank you for that, Alex.

Bob, do you want to say something about justice and about how all of that was handled?

Thank you, Bob.

I have a final wee question for Jim Phillips. From your research, Jim, and from the people you have spoken to and the work that you have done, what is your view of how the justice system functioned? In your view, was it fair? Did it deal with the situation appropriately, or were there significant issues with the justice system through all of it?

Tom, you spoke about it being the police’s role to protect the rights of people who are going about their business. Miners and striking miners were going about their business. Will you give us more of a flavour of when violence occurred? What were the flash points? You talked about trade unionists leading from the front. We have all seen the pretty horrific video footage of some of the violence that happened on picket lines. Will you give us more of a sense of how those incidents arose?

Thank you both for your helpful responses.

Thank you for laying that out so clearly. I will leave it there.

Yes.

Good morning and thank you for being here. This morning, we have heard about challenges and accusations of collusion and political interference in policing, and I hear clearly your refutations of that. We have also heard—and we know from some of the narrative around it—about the media being quite pliant. However, something that I am not sure has previously come out for many people is the disproportionate impact of the strikes on Scottish mining communities compared with those elsewhere. More Scottish miners were arrested and more of them lost their jobs than those elsewhere. I want to explore how some of that might have arisen.

When you were sent to police the picket lines, how were the miners described to you? What were you told about them? What orders did you receive? Were you told what the operational outcome of the policing procedure should be?

That is helpful. Thank you.

Tom, we have heard in evidence this morning that it appeared that certain individuals were targeted. I take on board what Jim McBrierty said about miners coming from elsewhere to join picket lines, which was often the flash point. Were you aware of any specific targeting of individuals? It seems as though active trade unionists were targeted more than others. Was there any operational decision or discussions around that focus of police activity?