Scottish Ministers are under pressure to back a compensation scheme for miners convicted during the bitter strike in the 1980s.
Campaigners want financial redress to be included in a pardon Bill which cleared its first parliamentary hurdle today.
Labour MSP Richard Leonard said: “Society owes these miners and their families a debt.”
The strike, which went on for around a year between 1984 and 1985, pitted the miners against a Thatcher Government determined to close pits.
Bitterness remains as many former pit workers lost their jobs and were blacklisted after they were prosecuted following tensions with the police.
MSPs backed the general principles of a new law which will issue an automatic pardon for miners convicted of offences, such as breach of peace, during a picket or on a demo.
The symbolic move would also apply in cases where a miner travelled for the purposes of participating in a picket.
In an impassioned speech, Leonard urged MSPs to beef up the Bill to include compensation:
“The whole might of the state was thrown against the miners, against their trade union, against their families, their communities, and even against their very way of life.
“So now it is time, all of these years later, for the whole might of the state to be thrown in behind the miners, behind their communities and behind their families.
“An honest and dignified response to what happened all those years ago is to establish through this bill the principle of a compensation scheme."
The former Scottish Labour leader described the lack of compensation as the “glaring omission” in the bill, adding:
“It is about the application of criminal law during the strike. It comes about because striking miners were arrested in Scotland by Scottish police officers, were prosecuted in Scotland by Scottish procurator fiscals and they were convicted in Scotland by Scottish sheriffs in Scottish courts.
“To those MSPs who are havering about this issue, the question you must ask yourself in the coming weeks is this - 'If not now, when?'”
Justice Secretary Keith Brown described the pardon bill as "reconciliation".
But he also accused Leonard of a "broad based attack" on the Scottish Government and claimed the powers needed to "validate and approve compensation" are reserved to Westminster.
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