The Durham Miners Gala and Labour leaders
Saturday 13th July sees one of the great events of the labour movement calendar, the Durham Miners Big Meeting held in the centre of the City. Hundreds of thousands will attend in what these days is a community focused occasion. It is the 40th anniversary of the 1984/5 miners strike
Labour leader Keir Starmer will not be there (he appeared at the virtual Gala in 2020). He wrote on the Gala in the Northern Echo in 2023 and has done the same again this year. A tradition is being invented.
The tradition of Labour leaders and senior figures attending is a long one dating back to Keir Hardie, but it was broken in the aftermath of the 1984/5 miners strike. Neil Kinnock did speak but subsequently Tony Blair (who was a Durham MP) Gordon Brown and John Smith did not attend. The tradition was resumed with Ed Miliband in 2012 and followed by Jeremy Corbyn.
Certainly until the 1984/5 strike Durham NUM had been a bastion of right-wing or perhaps more specifically anti-Communist trade unionism. The attendance of post-1945 of leaders such as Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan and Foot reflected the fact that until Mrs Thatcher got to work the miners were a powerful voice both in the labour movement and the Labour Party.
It’s a world that we haven’t quite lost as the continuation of the Gala underlines. The pits have gone but the spirit of solidarity continues.
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