FORTY years after South Yorkshire Police’s brutal assault on striking miners at the Orgreave coking plant, campaigners have announced plans for a rally to press their demand for a public inquiry.

The government has repeatedly ruled out an inquiry into the events of June 18 1984, which saw the worst violence of the year-long miners’ strike.

Though justice has been delayed and thus denied for four decades, the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign has now announced that it will hold a protest in Sheffield on June 18.

Campaign chairman Joe Rollin said: “We still believe there is overwhelming evidence for an inquiry.

“The government has stopped replying to our letters, even though we believe there is a link between what happened at Orgreave and the legislation brought in this year to restrict protests.

“For many, the wounds of Orgreave are as fresh as if it was yesterday.”

The campaign group was founded in 2012 to seek justice over the police violence outside the British Steel coking plant near Rotherham.

During the epic strike by members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) over job cuts and pit closures, the union called a mass picket outside the Orgreave coking plant, aimed at disrupting the supply of coke from Orgreave to Scunthorpe.

According to the campaigners, the police were very “helpful” in guiding miners to the site, a stark contrast to the weeks before when strikers faced attempts to prevent them from reaching the colliery.

When they arrived there, they were met by mounted officers armed with truncheons who kettled pickets and charged at them, leaving many with serious injuries and others wrongfully arrested.

On the basis of research into government and police papers in the public domain, the campaigners believes that the South Yorkshire force was not acting independently but as an arm of central government.

In 2016, a legal submission calling for an independent inquiry was rejected by then home secretary Amber Rudd on the grounds that there had been no deaths, that it was not of public interest and that the events occurred a long time ago.