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UK: Damages against the police

01 July 1991

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South Yorkshire police have agreed to pay more than £500,000 in damages and costs to 39 former striking miners injured during clashes with police outside Orgreave coking plant in June 1984. The miners were among 95 pickets arrested and charged with riot and unlawful assembly. At the trial of some of the pickets in 1985 the police offered no evidence and the charges against the rest of the men were dropped. Commenting on the out of court settlement Russell Broomhead one of the men compensated said that it showed "how afraid the police were to go to court." One of the witnesses to police behaviour at Orgreave was photographer Lesley Boulton, who was herself the subject of a widely used picture showing her under the raised truncheon of a police horseman. In June this year she told the Observer that she had begun proceedings against the police, but had dropped the case in 1985 after her case file was taken from her solicitor's office in Sheffield. It was apparently an expert burglary in which nothing else was taken. Stephen Henson has received £12,000 from Gwent constabulary following an incident in Newport during which he was assaulted and hit on the head with a truncheon after being approached by policemen. His wound required 18 stitches and he was charged with being drunk and disorderly and assaulting police. Awarding the damages Mr Justice French said one of the officers lost his temper after Henson was rude. Vijay Kumar Janardnan received a £40,000 settlement from the Metropolitan Police in an action for malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment following his arrest in 1982 for shoplifting and pickpocketing. The charges were quashed on appeal in 1985 but by this time Janardnan had lost his job because of the convictions. The settlement does not include court costs, which have been described as considerable. Guardian 24.4.91; Police Review 10.5.91; Independent 21.6.91; Guardian 21.6.91; Observer 23.6.91.d

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