The Durham Miners Gala. Solidarity, fun, beer (and sometimes rain)
They seem to do celebrations and festivals better in other Labour movements in other countries, or at least that is the mythology that has grown up around the British labour movement.
It isn’t true as this weekend the Durham miners gala, in the ex-mining but still very much university and cathedral city of Durham, will demonstrate.
The pits of County Durham saw struggles for trade union organisation, but unions were often short lived as battles with employers were fought and lost. However by the 1860s there was a stable union structure and in 1871 the first ‘big meeting’ of Durham miners, the miners gala was held.
It has continued ever since with breaks for the World Wars the 1926 General Strike and the 1984/5 miner’s strike as well as the pandemic period in 2020 & 21.
Several things characterise the gala. Firstly the parade of banners from individual pits, many famously political, depicting figures such as Lenin and Keir Hardie. Secondly the presence of brass bands, a traditional form of music associated with collieries. Thirdly the speakers; down the years the Durham Miners Gala has been the key place for Labour and trade union leaders to speak. Every Labour leader bar one has spoken. The exception of course was Blair who never bothered despite being an MP local to the area. The famous names of British labour have spoken from Nye Bevan a former miner’s leader and founder of the NHS to Tony Benn, and, as importantly international speakers from struggles around world from South Africa to Chile.
The gala attracted as many as 300,000 people in the 1950s and it might seem to be an event dominated by men but the reality is rather different, There was also a tradition of a separate women’s gala and there was a crèche from 1937. Despite the fact that the actions of Mrs Thatcher means there are no working pits left in Durham the tradition of the gala continues. Attendances are on the increase and new banners are appearing reinventing the festival as one of a celebration of community solidarity.
In the age of neo-liberalism to remember and celebrate the Durham miners who stood up very publicly for what is right and decent in public life- the dignity of organisation and the fight against repression-is itself an act of resistance.
Its a festival of the left and also a place for the left to argue it’s politics, but it’s also about fun. There is a lot of respectability involved with the public culture of the British left but there are some unrespectable bits as well. Not only the music and dancing, but also in many cases the beer. We find in 1960 complaints that Durham pub owners were putting up the price of a pint on gala days such was the demand.
I should add though that historically some of the time it did rain
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