Yorkshire’s heroic Freedom Riders staged a victory celebration in Sheffield yesterday — celebrating charges against two campaigners being dropped on the day their trial was due to start.

Pensioners George Arthur (above left) and Tony Nuttall (above right) were brutally arrested during a protest in June but prosecutors decided last week that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge them with obstruction and ticket fraud.

It meant that 200 people held a victory rally outside the magistrates’ court where they had planned a picket.

The Freedom Riders campaign saw pensioners and disabled people board trains without tickets in protest at South Yorkshire passenger transport executive’s withdrawal of their free travel.

During one journey police kettled dozens of activists on the platform in Sheffield roughly moving against Mr Nuttall and Mr Arthur when they held a spontaneous rally.

They staged a brief march around Sheffield yesterday, heading to the railway station to confront British Transport Police — “but they were keeping a low profile and had locked the office for the day,” said Mr Nuttall.