CAMPAIGNERS for an inquiry into the Tories’ most vicious state attack on organised workers will renew their demands when supporters of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) march through the streets of Sheffield in South Yorkshire today.

Thirty-nine years after baton-swinging police cavalry charged into defenceless striking miners, the campaigners will show their continuing determination to hold those responsible to account.

They said an inquiry would “put an end to years of lies and cover-ups by the Conservative government about the political role they played in orchestrating and managing the pit closure programme in the 1980s, directing militaristic police operations in an industrial dispute and manipulating the courts and media to manufacture a false narrative to demonise and criminalise workers fighting for their jobs and communities.”

On June 18 1984, police who had previously prevented pickets from travelling freely, often smashing their car windscreens and headlights, ushered thousands of striking miners into a field next to the coking plant at Orgreave in South Yorkshire which was supplying fuel to the steel industry.

When the miners were hemmed in mounted police wearing body armour charged followed by waves of well-protected riot police.

The confrontation has been described as “the Battle of Orgreave.”

But Hilary Cave, a National Union of Mineworkers staff member who was at the scene, told the Morning Star: “It wasn’t a battle. A battle requires both sides to be armed. There was only one side that was armed and it was the police — batons, horses. It wasn’t a battle. It was an assault.”

She said that even as she arrived at the field earlier: “I saw a man with a bloodied head. I saw a lot more bloodied heads that day. In fact literally in all my life I have never seen as much blood as I saw that day.” 

Kevin Horne, OTJC activist and ex-miner arrested at Orgreave said: “We were only striking for the right to work. 

“Pardons by the Scottish government for Scottish miners arrested during the ’84-5 miners’ strike, continuing anger in ex-mining communities, papers from the time of the strike embargoed from public release until at least 2066 and growing numbers who support this campaign for truth and justice, show it is in the public interest to hold an Orgreave inquiry to have a full and authoritative review of what happened and why we were treated so badly.”

The Tory government has refused pardons and an inquiry into the atrocity, despite evidence of the police’s actions having been compiled and submitted.

OTJC secretary Kate Flannery said: “No-one in government or the police has ever been held to account for what the government directed and the police did.

“The Tory government’s attempts to sweep malicious and dangerous government and police conduct under the carpet will not make it go away. It is a serious threat to our already declining democracy.”

John Dunn, a striking Derbyshire miner who was assaulted and arrested by police during the dispute, said: “The Tories are clearly afraid that an Orgreave inquiry would further expose their scandals, corruption and attempts to stifle dissent. 

“They have recently and very quickly organised a whole raft of draconian policing, anti-strike and anti-protest legislation to criminalise us and shut us up.

“The right to protest and the right to strike should not be a gift from the state, it should be our right! It is what we should expect in a democracy.”

Today’s march and rally begins at 1pm at City Hall, Barkers Pool, Sheffield, led by the Unite Brass Band.