ANDERTON'S POLICE IN YET ANOTHER COVER UP

PRESS RELEASE – 20/2/90

The National Justice for Mineworkers Campaign, created in the aftermath of the 1984/85 Miners strike to look after the interests of the 966 miners who had been sacked during the strike, is outraged at treatment given to four miners wives by James Anderton's Manchester police. The women, from the North Staffs Miners Wives Group, were subject to quite random, and quite frightening treatment from police while travelling through Manchester Airport on 14th August 1989.

The Justice Campaign is demanding a full explanation and enquiry into treatment meted out to innocent travellers. ALL attempts to receive an explanation have been stifled by a wall of silence and evasion erected around the incident by the police.

They were all detained for seven and a half hours under the Prevention of Terrorism Act by the police. Their crime? They were returning from a visit to Northern Ireland. ALL the Literature they had collected on their visit was photocopied as welt as their personal diaries. Nine photographs were taken of each of them. One woman was menstruating at the time but the policewoman in charge refused her any form of sanitary protection. She had to walk through the airport's public reception area with her dress soaked in blood when she was released. A freelance photographer from Birmingham who was accompanying them, had all his rolls of film of their visit confiscated by the police. All were released without charge.

"This may not seem much compared to the quite appalling miscarriage of Justice that the Home Office finally admitted happened to the recently released Guildford Four", said Justice convenor Bill Etherington, "But is symptomatic of what is slowly, but surety, emerging as common practice with police forces throughout Britain, and in particular with James Anderton's Manchester police. He quite clearly sees himself and his police as being completely above accountability to the public through the normal democratic procedures."

The Justice Campaign has also written to Kevin Murphy, Chair of the Greater Manchester Police Authority, but he has refused to even reply to them.

"The requests we have made to Anderton are perfectly clear," said Bill Etherington again. "We can only assume that the evasiveness of his reply is therefore deliberate. Those who go to such lengths to avoid giving straight answers to straight questions could quite easily be seen as having something to hide. As doubts about the Birmingham Six and Broadwater Farm Three are now begining to show, the Guildford Four may not be the only victims of corrupt police practices and, for that matter, the shadows that fell over Manchester Police Force as a result of the John Stalker affair have yet to disappear. Behaviour such as this, when innocent people are not only subjected to such treatment but face a cover up when they complain, can only fuel those doubts".

The Justice Campaign are turning their AGM in Sheffield on March 24 1990 into a major rally to publicise the incident and to see justice done to the women. It also wants to add its name to the growing list of people who want the Birmingham Six and Broadwater Three released. Come along in force.