How has the Bishop of Sheffield got time to chair the Orgreave Inquiry?

How has a serving Church of England bishop got time to chair a statutory public inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ within the 1984 Miners’ Strike?

The Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, apparently has, despite the challenges of low clergy morale and dwindling congregations that the national Church faces. In 2019, he tried to influence the then Conservative Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, to let him head up an inquiry into the clash between police and striking coal miners on the Orgreave Coking plant in South Yorkshire. 

Javid turned him down but when Labour got elected last 12 months with a manifesto commitment to launch an Orgreave inquiry, Bishop Wilcox found himself preaching to the choir. On July 21, when Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced the inquiry to be chaired by Bishop Wilcox, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote a bit headlined “First they got here for the soldiers, now it’s the coppers … Orgreave is one other excuse to bop on Mrs Thatcher’s grave”. 

Back in 1984, Littlejohn was a young industrial correspondent for London’s Evening Standard. In his Mail piece, he described the Orgreave clash through which fortunately nobody died:

“It wasn’t pretty. Police charging on horseback and pickets hurling rocks made for nearly medieval scenes. But the police didn’t start it. The blame was entirely all the way down to (Arthur) Scargill (then leader of the National Union of Mineworkers), a revolutionary communist who thought he could prevail through violence.”

Littlejohn was scathing about Bishop Wilcox’s involvement: “The inquiry can be chaired by the fashionable Bishop of Sheffield, ‘Pete’ Wilcox, who has declared it is vital for ‘community healing’. So no bias there, then.”

The Guido Fawkes political website also weighed in on July 21: “Over the weekend the federal government announced it’s going to capitulate to the demands of left-wing campaigners and launch a national statutory inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave.”

Branding the inquiry “a taxpayer-funded exercise in Thatcher-bashing”, Guido quoted Yvette Cooper: “I feel the miners’ strike still has deep scars across coalfield communities, and the selections made at the moment – the broadest decisions that were taken by the Thatcher government within the Nineteen Eighties – the scars can still be felt across the coalfields.”

Guido commented on Labour’s appointment of Bishop Wilcox to chair the inquiry: “Wilcox previously attacked the Tories and was naturally certainly one of the bishops to place his name to an open letter against no-deal Brexit. Should get the intended results then…”  

I asked Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, to whom the Bishop of Sheffield is accountable within the C of E’s Northern Province, whether he had been informed of the time commitment that chairing the Orgreave Inquiry would involve. Was Archbishop Cottrell satisfied that this commitment wouldn’t detract from Bishop Wilcox’s canonical duties in his diocese? 

I also asked what the Archbishop’s view can be of a stipendiary (paid) incumbent in his own diocese of York who took on a time-consuming secular commitment? What is the edge beyond which a vicar can be in peril of neglecting his or her parochial duties?

A spokesman got here back with this statement: “The Archbishop has been informed of the anticipated time commitment involved. While the precise scope and duration will evolve because the Inquiry progresses, Bishop Pete will proceed to fulfil his responsibilities as Diocesan Bishop, and his canonical duties can be maintained.

“The Archbishop considers this appointment a natural extension of episcopal ministry in the general public square, following the instance of Bishop James Jones serving on the Hillsborough Independent Panel. He holds Bishop Pete in his prayers and is grateful for his willingness to serve in this manner.”

The reference to the previous Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, is important. When from 2010 to 2012 Bishop Jones chaired the panel that produced its report into the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster through which 97 Liverpool fans died the Church of England was not thriving but it surely was not in its current parlous state.

Numbers attending C of E churches in Bishop Wilcox’s own South Yorkshire diocese have fallen by 24 per cent since he became Bishop of Sheffield in 2017. Then all-age average Sunday attendance across the diocese was 13,400. By 2023 it had fallen to 10,200. C of E dioceses across the board have didn’t get back to their pre-Covid attendances however the Covid excuse gets ever thinner with each passing 12 months since lockdown ended.

In 2019, The Sheffield Star reported on Bishop Wilcox’s decision to establish a “task and finish group” to look into cutting frontline clergy numbers to get monetary savings. The paper quoted Bishop Wilcox’s statement on his diocesan website: “While at the tip of 2018 we had 103 stipendiary incumbents within the Diocese of Sheffield, in actual fact (were it not for the sale of three properties), we could afford only 90 this 12 months.”

Morale is hardly riding high within the C of E. To be a parish vicar in Sheffield Diocese should be particularly difficult. Has not Bishop Wilcox already got his hands full taking care of the clergy and parishes he’s pastorally chargeable for and leading his diocese in pro-active evangelism and church planting?

Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar in Sheffield Diocese, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.