The 128th Durham Miners’ Gala - Saturday July 9th 2011

“It’s infectious, and I’d bet any trade union member attending for the first time will want to return to the Durham Miners’ Gala,” said plumber Pat McCourt, chair of the Unite Yorkshire and Humberside regional committee.

Sometimes called ‘Durham Big Meeting’ the Gala was first held in 1871 and last year’s, on Saturday July 10^th, brought over 100,000 on to the windy cobbled streets of the historic Cathedral city of Durham.

Ed Malcolm was a miner until the Tories closed Westoe Colliery, where he worked for more than 20 years. Today he is employed as an advice worker at Middlesbrough Citizens Advice Bureau. He said: “It’s always marvellous to see so many people. I’d describe the gala as a carnival of working class solidarity and community spirit. Which is why it was important to keep it going, by inviting other unions to get involved, after the mines were closed in the 80s and 90s.

The closures were major acts of industrial sabotage. We had the cheapest coal in the industrialised world, but the Margaret Thatcher and John Major Government’s wanted to destroy the post-war social-democratic consensus. To do so they needed to cripple the National Union of Mineworkers as an example to other trade unionists. Coal from places where workers were little more than slaves, such as South Africa and Columbia, replaced British coal in the electricity generating stations.

They also made sure research efforts to develop clean coal technology and carbon capture were starved of funds. I was on strike for a year in 1984 but eventually we were virtually starved back to work and the pits were closed. But if the Tories hoped to extinguish people’s spirits the turn out at the gala shows they’ve failed.”

John Chilton, the Unite Convenor at Cleveland Potash Limited near Whitby agrees saying; “as one of the UK’s few remaining miners I find the Gala to be an uplifting event and each year we are finding more members are wanting to get involved. Our aim is to have a new banner made in time for this year’s and we will march proudly behind it.” 

Which is exactly what Unite finance sector members were doing last year, their new banner having its first outing. One of those accompanying it was Ruth Creaney, senior workplace rep for Barclays across the north of the UK, who said she was “fully behind keeping alive this traditional trade union event that is built on the values of collective organising and solidarity. It’s also a very colourful spectacle and it’s great to see the dozens of Miners’ banners from across Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire being paraded and listen to the accompanying brass bands.”

According to Pat McCourt: “The banners are one of the real highlights of the Gala. Each miner’s lodge/branch had or has one and the decision as to what to include on it is very important. At Dean and Chapter in Ferryhill, my father’s workplace for many years, the banner shows two white and one black miner. This represents the internationalism of the trade union movement. Other banners depict important political figures such as A J Cook the mineworker’s leader in the 1926 General Strike. They make an impressive sight, including the new ones.”

In 2010 there were two new banners, from Eldon Drift and Usworth, on display. Costing as much as £15,000 their design and creation is a community effort in which children play a prominent part.

“They are the future of the region, but it’s important they have some understanding of the past and the banners are a creative way of interesting the children in local history. It seems to work as each year more children and young people are getting involved in the banner projects, often working alongside their parents and grandparents” says Ed proudly.

Other youngsters are also getting involved in the Gala through the brass bands that accompany the marchers behind the banners. The bands have always been an important part of cultural life in mining communities. Today they continue to provide opportunities for cash strapped working class young people to learn how to play a musical instrument they could never afford to purchase themselves.

According to Paul Meszaros, who works for Hope Not Hate in Yorkshire, the combination of marchers, banners and brass bands is “a powerful one especially when each Miner’s lodge halts to play a popular tune and receive a salute from the VIPs on the balcony of the Royal County Hotel. They then proceed down to the Racecourse ground next to the River Wear where there were stalls, fairground attractions and a chance to have a picnic with friends and family before the speeches started after lunch.”

Last years speakers included Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Chris Baugh, PCS Assistant General Secretary, Adla Khalaf, an advisor on water issues to Palestinian negotiators and Unite assistant general secretary Len McCluskey, who said that in light of the attacks to be faced by working people from the new Government “the community spirit and solidarity on display was going to be needed more than ever in the future.”

In the past speakers have included Labour Leader Clement Attlee, Mrs Bessie Braddock MP, Harold Wilson, Arthur Scargill, Bob Crow and Dennis Skinner. Skinner, a regular at the Gala, is a big fan of the day saying: “I think people leave the Gala feeling better. It is the kind of place where they get lifted in good times and in bad.”  

Q&A with Dave Douglass, author of Ghost Dancers on the 84-85 Miners' strike

Ghost Dancers - David John Douglass               

Christie Books

£12.99

Retired coal-miner and political activist Dave Douglass takes an insiders look at the 84-85 coal strike, and its aftermath, in which he played a prominent role including help co-ordinate many Yorkshire pickets.  

Strange title?

Anyone who has read the history of the Native American peoples (the red Indians) should understand. What happens with the Indians is not simply a war to defeat them but to wipe out all memory of who they were, their history and beliefs. The Ghost Dancers started as a spiritual endeavour to hold on to their free will, spirit and identity.

Something similar in cultural terms has happened to the mining communities. The government came from 1981 to 1994 to defeat us in industrial action. They took away the source of our social and economic existence by rigging the energy market and closing down virtually every coal mine in Britian. Then they tried to break our spirit and the memory of who we were. Our ‘Ghost Dance’ is witnessed in the annual Durham miner’s gala, 90,000 people, with their bands and banners and speeches of hope and vision marched last year - yet the last mine closed in 1994.

Why do you claim that ‘the miner’s almost won?’

The book will explain three clear occasions when we came to within a wisp of winning, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was ready to concede the lot. Ian McGregor, the coal board chairman, actually conceded four or five times but had the script changed by Thatcher each time. 

The closest was with the decision of NACODS, our brother mining union for colliery officials, to join the strike. However their leaders cobbled together an utterly ineffective deal, which never saved one mine, and left us on our own. From then on, we were fighting to the death without any real prospect of winning.

Christie Books say this is the definitive history of the strike - why?

Because all the books by academics and journalists have been painfully inaccurate or wildly speculative. Most of them have not a clue how the strike started, nor how the Union and this action was structured, nor who planned what on either side.

Doesn’t the book give credence to those who argued the miners were violent?

Three miners were killed and one disabled for the rest of his life, two children died on picking coal to keep warm and 20,000 miners were hospitalised. One driver taking a solitary blackleg to work in a strike bound Welsh village was killed. Miners are men used to fighting the earth. They exude dignity and self respect, but when threatened they will fight, and that fight did get violent. All of this is explained in context without pulling any punches (no pun intended). It will also demonstrate something like 110,000 strikers miners NEVER picketed.  This will be a revelation to many.  

On what basis do you claim that Thatcher wasn’t interested in the economic case for coal?

Because the book demonstrates that Britain produced the cheapest deep-mined coal in the world. Instead of which we now import almost 50 million tonnes of coal, whilst leaving our own in the ground and putting miners on the dole in communities now wrecked by poverty, hopelessness, and anti social crime. Altogether the cost is nudging £30 billion. David Cameron has the brass neck to speak of ‘A broken Britian’ when his party and its junior partner New Labour was the one to break it.

By making the case for increased coal production aren’t you on ‘the wrong side’ in the climate change battle?

Coal production doubled in the last twenty years and it will almost double again in the next ten. Fact - coal will be burned. We must ensure that we urgently develop clean coal technology and carbon capture storage as well as workable alternatives, like solar and tidal power. But we should also treat coal as a precious power source and greatly increase the efficiency of its use. I don’t trust many of the middle class ‘green’ anti coal protesters, it’s really just Thatcher’s children and grandchildren still waging war on the miners and those dirty workers.

An example of sustainable development

It may nestle alongside the must substantial ancient monument in Britain. Yet Battlesteads Hotel at Wark, near Hexham in Northumberland certainly isn’t behind the times. Because faced with an electricity supply problem, its owners, Dee and Richard Slade, have shown rural businesses how to increase food production, cut costs and their carbon footprint whilst still protecting wildlife and the environment. Now they are hoping others will follow suit. 

The couple took over the 17-bedroom hotel and restaurant close to Hadrian’s Wall five years ago and faced an immediate problem in supplying hot water and heating for its guests at peak periods during the day. With much of their capital tied up in refurbishing the 18^th century building the prospect of massive investment to improve the electricity supply forced the pair to consider renewable energy sources.

Out went the old, inefficient oil boiler. In came a biomass boiler that runs on soft wood chip from nearby Kielder Forest. Total construction cost £60,00, for an efficient system which more than copes with the demands of twice as many annual visitors as previously. And with oil prices continuing to rise, the cost at around 2p a kilowatt per hour for energy is around a fifth what the Slade’s would have be paying if they’d not made radical changes.

“We will have paid for our investment in six years through employing a carbon neutral system using by products from natural forest maintenance that has the added advantage of helping to maintain local jobs. It’s great,” said Dee with pride.

Yet that is far from the end of the story because also arriving in 2008 were solar panels. Despite Northumberland not being the sunniest place in Britain, the energy generated has been more than sufficient to set in motion a massive expansion in home grown vegetables, salads and fruits at Battlesteads. Considering its set in a region where ground frosts can be anticipated into June and as early as mid-September this is a considerable achievement.

Surplus heat is piped into polytunnels, the first of which is used to plant seedlings, which are moved outside when summer arrives. A second helps ensure a twelve-month growing season, which means fresh herbs are never more than four hours from being ready.

Meanwhile matting has been laid in the vegetable gardens, the aim being to reduce the laborious and costly weeding tasks and then use salvaged water to irrigate the planted products. 

“We have an incredible range growing in our gardens including broad beans, sprouts, rhubarb, broccoli and thyme. Next year we should have raspberries and strawberries. From the comments we’ve received from visitors, including regular Ramblers Association groups, I think people appreciate the food we are serving. This is known as an arable area. Yet we’ve shown what’s possible and the great thing is the spin off has seen the return of many birds, bees and butterflies, which we are further encouraging by erecting bird feeders and constructing lavender beds. I think what we’ve done here, including increasing the numbers employed from three to seventeen, can provide an example to others and whilst there’s an awful lot to learn about the countryside its clear that sustainability is the future,” said Richard.

Who benefits from the Common Agricultural Policy?

Very few people would have known that during the General Election period there was in place a ban on the public from seeing information on which English and Welsh farmers and agribusinesses had picked up the taxpayers €3 billion in 2009 from EU farm subsidies.

Defra’s decision was a return to the bad old days of just a few years ago when all such information was classified as secret. The organisation, and similar ones across Europe, was forced to change its attitude after journalists, collectively working across Europe under http://farmsubsidy.org, employed freedom of information requests to obtain the facts and figures.

In 2005, against opposition from the Country Land and Business Association and its supporters in the Conservative Party, Labour released the figures for the first time.  Farming subsidies account for approximately 40% of the EU’s entire budget and in Britain rose from £1.7 billion in 2004 to £2.8 billion four years later, a jump of 64%.

Analysts were anticipating the 2009 statistics being released in May 2010. That was certainly the case in the other 26 EU states, and across the border in Scotland courtesy of the Scottish Government. No so in England and Wales, London flouting an EU directive here with a curt Defra announcement that 2009 figures would not be out ‘until after the election.’

If farmsubsidy.org is to be believed the decision benefitted the Conservative’s. They estimated over 10% of the parties 650 candidates were likely to be receiving a subsidy, with the postman or woman even delivering some of the receipts to the same postcode shared by the local Conservative Association. A number of Ukip candidates are also thought to have received subsidies.

In 2008 the main beneficiaries of the €3755 EU farm subsidies were as follows: -

€ Millions 

Tate and Lyle Europe 134 [yes one hundred and thirty four million]

Czarnikow Group 8.5

KG Growers 3.9 

G’s Growers 3.6

Farmcare 2.9

Berryworld producer organisation 2.4

RSPB 2.1

Forest of Dartmoor Commoners Association 1.7

Agreserves 1/7

Fruition Pro Ltd 1.6

In 17^th place was Sir Richard Suttons Settled Estates with 1.1 million euros in direct payments, as well as close to 400,000 euros for rural development. Five years ago, when Labour released the first figures, attempts by the Guardian newspaper to get Sir Richard’s views on his taxpayer’s bonuses failed after he was unavailable for comment. He has since maintained his silence. The Suttons claim to be able to trace their lineage back to Siward, Lord Sutton of Sutton in Holderness, who lived at the time of the Norman conquest.

Keep the coastal path say ramblers

The Ramblers, Britain’s largest walkers’ rights organisation are pressing the government not to listen to calls from the Country Land and Business Association [CLA] to save £50 million by abandoning implementation of the Marine and Coastal Access Act.

Introduced last year as an amendment to the Right to Roam legislation of 2000, the Act began a decade long implementation process by Natural England to enable walking on the country’s entire coastal path for the first time ever. This is something the Ramblers have campaigned vigorously for since their formation 75 years ago.

But with the coalition government making massive cuts the CLA, founded as the Country Landowners Association in 1907, has labelled the pathway ‘an unnecessary waste of money’ claiming 80% of the coast is already accessible and only half of the remainder could be made so because of ports, harbours and military sites.

The statement comes as Natural England begin implementing the first stages of the Act by creating an improved route along the Lulworth to Portland stretch of the Dorset coast. This will provide greater access for thousands of spectators intending watching the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic sailing events due to be held around the Weymouth area.

Before then, in 2011, work should begin in five other areas from Whitehaven to Allonby in Cumbria, the County of Durham, Dover to Ramsgate, Sheringham to Happisburgh Common in Norfolk and Minehead to Stert Point in Somerset.

Ian Brodie, an active member of the Ramblers since 1967, lives near Kendal. He and his wife Krysia wrote Cumbria County Council’s Cumbria Coastal Way: Morecambe Bay to Solway Firth guidebook. The route they plotted is accessible but “not ideal as sometimes it isn’t sustainable as its too far inland or tidal or involves walking over a shingle beach.”  He disputes the CLA 80% figure, and so do Natural England who last year calculated that about a 1/3^rd of the English coastline had no legally secure, safe path. Furthermore they estimated another 13% could be lost to erosion over the next 20 years.

Brodie therefore welcomes forcing coastal landowners to open up access saying, “Whilst many have been great, others have not. If the government listens to the CLA the local areas that will be affected include close to Morecambe around the Holker Hall Estate owned by Lord Cavendish where there are miles of coast without access to it.” Holker Estate occupies over 15,000 acres of land and controls access to the Morecambe Bay foreshore. The Cavendish family are one of Britain’s largest landowning families with 65,000 acres of land, as well as another 8,000 in the Republic of Ireland.

If the political case for access is clear then what about the economic? Tom Franklin, the Ramblers Chief Executive, said, “The South West Coast path, the best current example of a coastal path, annually generates £307 million for the regional economy - equivalent to £390,000 per mile of coastline. Axing the path might seem like an easy cut to make, but the outlay is relatively small in comparison to the benefits it can bring.”

A point driven home by a passionate Ian Brodie pointing out that £50 million “is the equivalent of one mile of motorway and the 2,500 miles of coastal pathway that will be opened up will easily save such a sum in health benefits alone. There is a unique atmosphere walking on the coast, with wonderful afternoon lighting displays, superb wildlife and an awful lot of history. I call it a necklace of pearls.”

Stoke 3 Sunderland 2

Stoke City 3

Carew 32, Huth 83, 90+3

Sunderland 2

Richardson 2, Gyan 47

Stoke’s courage and commitment counted much more than Sunderland’s class at the Britannia Stadium on Saturday. 2-1 down with seven minutes remaining Tony Pulis’s side captured all three points courtesy of two Robert Huth goals. There was a touch of fortune about the first, with John Carew appearing to flick Jermaine Pennant’s superbly curled free kick on with his outstretched arm.

Not so with the second, Huth ramming another Pennant free kick under the body of Sunderland’s hapless keeper Craig Gordon. Scotland’s number one had a nightmare, constantly failing to show enough body strength or punching power when repeatedly put under pressure from the long throw-ins of Rory Delap or Pennant and Matthew Etherington’s crosses and corners. Not that he should have been beaten for City’s first equaliser on 32 minutes, as Carew was half a yard behind him when he hooked the ball home from an offside position.

Sunderland had taken the lead on two minutes. Phil Bardsley’s ball into the box was badly controlled by Asamoah Gyan but Kieran Richardson following up made Stoke’s hesitant defence pay by lashing home for his fourth goal in three games. The home might have equalised six minutes later but Huth’s shot was well blocked by Gordon with the Stoke defender firing the rebound over. The home crowd, who despite the excitement were largely silent until the final few minutes of the match, then thought they had equalised but Danny Higginbotham’s shot had hit the side-netting.

Within two minutes of restarting after the interval Sunderland were again back in the lead when new boy Sulley Muntari’s long ball saw Gyan outmuscle Huth before turning inside to bury the ball past Asmir Begovic. Aston Villa recently paid £24 million to sign Darren Bent from the Wearsiders whilst Liverpool have just paid £35 million for Andy Carroll. Gyan is better than both and with Sunderland dominating possession for the next 20 minutes it was difficult not to sympathise with the Ghanaian’s obvious frustration at the inability of his sides midfield players to provide at least one decent chance that would surely have seen him wrap up the match.

Sensing their opportunity Stoke, helped by Bruce’s failure to see that Muntari was clearly struggling with his fitness, wrestled their way back into the match to earn a victory that moved them into the top half of the Premier League. For Sunderland it was the end of a week in which they had played two fine games, but by conceding seven goals they failed to collect even a point. 

Disabled Facilities Grants

A four year old Bradford girl who lost her eyesight during cancer treatment can’t play in the family garden after her families request for a disabled facilities grant, that campaigners say should be mandatory, was ignored by the local council.

Disabled rights campaigners are now worried that Blyss Knowles’ case will, with spending cuts yet to fully hit home, be duplicated elsewhere.

Diagnosed with a genetic condition known to cause optic nerve tumours Blyss began a course of chemotherapy in July 2009 after an eye squint revealed she had cancer behind both eyes.

Now blind in her right eye she has just 2% vision in the left, enabling her to see someone’s shadow. Just after starting hospital treatment Blyss, her mother, father and three siblings moved to the Tyersal Estate, Bradford where it was hoped she would be able to use the garden.

However unsteady on her feet she found it an unsafe place with her mother, Fiona, complaining it is “uneven, with holes and dips in it. Consequently last summer when other children were in the garden she sat alone in the house. This upset her. Its use will give Blyss a sense of normality, especially as she does not always have the energy to go to activities elsewhere.”

To help the family has conducted a fund-raising drive to raise £6,000 to kit out a sensory room at home. This will provide a chill out space and assist the 4½ year old to improve her fingertip feeling, thus aiding the learning of Braille. About a quarter of the funds have so far been found.

Meantime the family has made requests to their housing association and Bradford Council to make the garden accessible. The Council’s housing stock was transferred to Incommunities in 2003 and they have made some cosmetic improvements by tidying up the garden and putting on a new gate to keep dogs out.

Further improvements could be made through a Disabled Facilities Grant [DFG]. These fund adaptations to enable disabled people to live as comfortably as possible in their homes. Eligible work is wide ranging, providing for access to and within the property, stairs lifts or access to the garden.

Last year Lord McKenzie of Luton, then Parliamentary Under Secretary for State in the Department for Communities and Local Government, confirmed that DFG, which is managed by local authorities, was a mandatory entitlement.

In May 2010 Blyss’s family met with Bradford’s Deaf Blind Services Coordinator to assess the young child’s needs. The completed form makes specific reference to wanting to apply for a DFG but appears to have immediately ruled out any chance of the family receiving one when it states, “the levelling off of the garden by the council is not available.”

Bradford Council was asked why the family was not being considered for a DFG and after a press officer initially suggested the question had nothing to do with them and should be re-directed to Incommunities they were unwilling to respond to further enquiries.

The case has angered Tim McSharry of the Access Committee for Leeds that provides information and support for disabled people who said: "Whilst appalling, it’s not unique. Increased numbers are contacting us about the failure of some Local Authorities and Social Landlords to carry out disability related adaptations. We are seriously concerned though that things are going to get even worse due to Government cuts, and the removal of the ring fencing that protects funding such as the DFG.”

Tim McSharry