IF a week is a long time in politics, 40 years might as well be the birth and death of the universe. Yet that seems to be the average length of time it takes for the Scottish Parliament to undo the mistakes of previous generations.

The news that Scottish miners will be pardoned by the Scottish Government is, frankly, a fantastic turn of events, and both the SNP’s Humza Yousaf and Scottish Labour’s Neil Findlay are to be commended for their work. For nearly 40 years, convicted miners have lived with criminal charges against their names that have cost them their livelihoods, redundancy and more.

More than 500 Scottish miners were convicted during the 1984 strike national dispute over mine closures; a disproportionately high number compared to the rest of the UK. Some 200 of those Scots were subsequently sacked by the National Coal Board, leaving many families in dire poverty under Thatcher’s milk-snatching regime while facing a litany of trumped-up charges.

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The tale of the miners is by no means a unique one. It has always come down to oppressed people to fight tooth and nail for justice and fairness – and that fight has always shamefully come with a price.

The LGBT community in Scotland also waited at least 40 years to have their criminal records, gained for the misdemeanor of simply existing, expunged from their files. It was still illegal to be gay in Scotland right up to 1980.

The suffragettes have never been pardoned for their role in securing the rights of women to vote, though inversely I doubt they would have ever sought a pardon. They have been vindicated in the eyes of society, if not the halls of Westminster.

However, 40 years is a long time. Many striking miners and defiant gay men had died well before they ever had the chance to be pardoned, which brings me to the crux of my argument: it’s easier for governments to mourn a dead activist than support a busy one.

I’ve seen repeatedly how the same voices that condemn the actions of contemporary activists also exonerate the same behaviour from campaigners in the past, nodding along to the story of suffragettes bombing the summer home of Chancellor Lloyd George while condemning the Black Lives Matter movement for taking direct action. It’s easy to pardon past champions for civil rights and working class solidarity when we can see, with hindsight, that their cause was just.

What, I wonder, will our governments be apologising for 40 years from now? Who will have lived with the consequences of unjust decisions in that time? The burden, ultimately always falls on those without power. In the 1980s, it was workers under the boot of Thatcher and the National Coal Board, and gay men who wanted to live and love freely. Today, it lies on a new generation of left-wing activists.

It is a fact that undercover police have been infiltrating progressive organisations in the UK since as far back as 1968. It wasn’t until a chance moment in 2010, when an environmental activist found her partner’s passport while on holiday, that much of the nefarious behaviour truly started to spill into the public consciousness.

In that moment, the activist in question learned the real name of her “boyfriend”. Shortly after she discovered he also had two children.

This was the start of what has come to be known as the “spy cops” scandal, an investigation into the long-term covert effort by police to infiltrate, amongst others, environmental groups. Posing as activists themselves, the police began romantic relationships with campaigners while secretly informing on them. At least three undercover cops fathered children with the women they were pretending to be in a relationship with.

Over four decades, more than 149 police officers have been given fake identities to infiltrate over 1000 political organisations in the UK, and that’s just the ones we know about.

When the cosmetics company Lush tried to raise awareness of the scandal in 2018, they found themselves misrepresented and smeared by a range of political figures including the Police Federation in England and Wales, who seem incapable of taking criticism. Ultimately, Lush dropped the campaign “for the safety of our staff” after ex-police officers intimidated staff.

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While victims of the police in England and Wales will potentially have access to justice through an ongoing public inquiry, those targeted in Scotland will not. The Scottish Government has chosen not to pursue a public inquiry into the Scottish victims, while the Edinburgh Court of Session rejected a plea to extend the inquiry in England and Wales to Scotland too.

Activists in Scotland have been left without the means to challenge the unethical behaviour of our own police force. This decision has stymied the possibility of understanding the role undercover police played in the miners’ strikes themselves.

It has long been suspected that officers infiltrated workers groups in Wales in 1984, and the current inquiry down south may finally provide concrete proof of those suspicions. But not in Scotland.

In the face of ecological collapse, the environmental movement will only grow in strength and intensity in the coming years. Our future is on the line.

Forty years from now, when the effects of climate change can be felt every day, will our Government be apologising for its role in spying on and convicting climate change activists? Or could it make the radical decision to be on the right side of history today?