Miners' strike 1984/85 pardon consultation: analysis of responses

2. The respondents and responses

2.1 This chapter provides information about the respondents to the consultation and the responses submitted.

Number of responses received and number included in the analysis

2.2 The consultation received 377 responses. Of these, 318 were substantive – that is, personalised – responses^[5] and 59 were standard campaign responses.^[6] A standard campaign response is a non-personalised response based on a standard text provided by a campaign organiser. No information was available for this consultation about the campaign organiser.^[7] Paragraphs 2.7–2.9 below provides further information about the campaign responses.

2.3 Eleven of the substantive responses were removed prior to analysis for the following reasons.

• In 10 cases, the respondents had submitted two different responses. In these cases, the responses were combined to create a single amalgamated response from each individual. Where there were differences in the respondent’s answers to closed questions, no response was entered into the amalgamated record. This process resulted in the removal of 10 responses – while the 10 amalgamated responses were retained for the analysis.
• In one final case, the respondent had submitted a revised response and requested that their initial response be deleted.

2.4 Thus, the analysis in this report is based on 366 responses (377 submitted responses minus 11 removed responses).

About the respondents (substantive responses only)

2.5 Substantive responses (i.e. non-campaign responses) were submitted by 294 individuals and 13 organisations or groups. (See Table 2.1.)

2.6 Of the 13 organisational responses received, five (5) were from trade unions or trade union-related bodies, two (2) were legal profession / legal services bodies, two (2) were from community councils and one (1) was from a local authority. The remaining three (3) organisational responses were from campaign groups or charitable organisations. A complete list of organisational respondents is provided at Annex 1.

Campaign responses

2.7 As noted above, the consultation received 59 standard campaign responses.

2.8 The campaign text addressed all 14 of the consultation questions, and the comments made are included in the analysis of comments for each question. However, the responses are not included in the tables shown in each chapter, which are based on the substantive (i.e. non-campaign) responses only.

2.9 The campaign text is presented in full in Annex 2 of this report.

Responses to individual questions (substantive responses only)

2.10 Annex 3 of the report provides details of the number and proportion of organisational and individual respondents who replied to each consultation question (for the substantive responses only).

2.11 In general, all or nearly all of the organisations answered all the consultation questions, whilst individuals were more likely to answer the closed questions than the open questions. Response rates for individuals in relation to the closed questions ranged from 93% to 99%. In contrast, the response rates for this group in relation to the open questions ranged from 72% for the open part of Question 1 (which asked for comments on whether miners convicted of breach of the peace related to the strike should be pardoned), to 6% for Question 14 (about the partial EQIA).

2.12 See Annex 3 for full details.