SHADOW Scottish Secretary Dave Anderson has stepped up the pressure on SNP ministers to use their powers to order an inquiry into the policing of the 1984-85 miners’ strike in Scotland with a call to Nicola Sturgeon to give “answers on behalf of those who feel like they have been woefully let down”.

Anderson, who was a striking miner himself during the bitter dispute, spoke of his own experiences and called on Sturgeon to “shine a light on a very dark period for our people” by holding a probe into the strike in Scotland, when campaigners say hundreds were wrongly convicted.

Sturgeon and her predecessor Alec Salmond have rejected calls at Holyrood to hold a Hillsborough-style inquiry into the strike, even though the dispute took place well over a decade before the start of devolution and was under the watch of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory party.

However, Anderson, Jeremy Corbyn’s lead on Scotland at Westminster, issued a stark challenge to the First Minister to show she was not afraid to probe the convictions of nearly 500 Scottish miners, which he suggested were unsafe and politically motivated.

Anderson was an active member of the National Union of Mineworkers'(NUM), involved in union pickets of pits during stand-offs between striking miners and police during the year-long dispute over mine closures.

The Labour MP for Blaydon said he would now write to Sturgeon and her Justice Secretary Michael Matheson, urging the Scottish Government to shift its position on the issue.

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, he said:"It is a great sadness that an SNP government that spouts rhetoric on a regular basis about transparency is resisting attempts by genuine people to shine a light on a very dark period for our people.

"They should reflect and change tack and give a lead to Westminster by ordering a full and frank inquiry into the police actions in Scotland. Failure to do so will only lead to the sad reality where people will query what they are afraid of uncovering.

He added: "It is because of this that I plan on writing to both the Scottish Justice Secretary, Michael Matheson and Nicola Sturgeon, asking for answers on behalf of those who feel like they have been woefully let down.

"It’s an old saying that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This still rings true today. We should open the book on those dark days in order to learn and not make the same mistakes over again."

The UK Government has come under pressure from campaigners to conduct a review of material relating to the so-called 1984 battle of Orgreave, a coking plant in South Yorkshire and one of the key flashpoints of the industrial dispute that set the tone for policing of picket lines in the rest of the country.

Anderson's intervention came after documents recently released under the UK’s ‘Thirty-year rule’ about the conduct of the dispute. These showed that senior members of the then Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher – including Home Secretary Leon Brittan, Attorney General Sir Michael Havers and the Prime Minister herself – drew up plans to intervene in police operational matters and fast-track prosecutions of strikers.

Anderson called on Sturgeon to "open the book" on the dispute in Scotland, as he spoke about his own encounters with the police during the strike, when he said officers were "given a free hand to do as they saw fit".

In an emotional plea to the First Minister, Anderson who worked in the coalfields of North East England, said: "It’s an old saying that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This still rings true today.

"We should open the book on those dark days in order to learn and not make the same mistakes over again."

Speaking about his own experiences in the strike, Anderson said: "Like thousands of others I went up and down the country seeking support for our cause from other trade unionists, political campaigners and genuinely concerned citizens.

"One of the main reasons that we were unsuccessful was the use of police as a national security force. From blocking roads to taking over whole villages, the police were used as agents of the state to prosecute the strike on behalf of the government.

"When problems developed in individual villages, phalanxes of police were drafted in from outside of the area. This led to the alienation of communities who were always, previously, law abiding. The police were given a free hand to do as they saw fit.

"The debacle at Orgreave is the clearest and worst example of a police force who were a law under themselves, but there were hundreds of other, localised, examples that should be subjected to closer scrutiny."

However, the Scottish Government claimed it would be inappropriate to order an inquiry into the strike in Scotland and said it was for individual miners to lodge their own appeals against convictions with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission,

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “There are no plans to hold an inquiry, either into the conduct of the police or alleged wrongful criminal convictions, relating to the 1984/85 miners’ strike. That does not prevent anyone convicted of a crime in a Scottish court, and who considers they have experienced a miscarriage of justice, from contacting the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).

“It would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to intervene in the independent and long-established procedures of the SCCRC. Any conclusions reached by an inquiry relating to alleged wrongful convictions connected to the 1984-85 miners’ strike would not have any effect in either upholding or overturning these convictions. That power is held by a court of law.”