MPs heaped pressure on the government yesterday for a public inquiry into the 1984-5 miners’ strike against pit closures as former mining communities across Britain stage events marking the 30th anniversary of the epic struggle.

Former National Union of Mineworkers president Ian Lavery, now Labour MP for Wansbeck, will raise the issue in a Commons motion — so far backed by 60 MPs — which “regrets that nearly 30 years after the strike ended, there are still men who were wrongly arrested or convicted during the dispute, who have never received justice.”

Demands for an inquiry intensified with the release of secret Cabinet papers revealing that the Thatcher government and the National Coal Board lied about their plans to decimate Britain’s deep coal-mining industry.