The Big Meeting

A Hopeful Relaunch of a Local Tradition

By Dom Birch

On the second Saturday of every July, the Durham Miners’ Gala is held. The country’s largest annual gathering of trade unionists, the Durham Miners’ Gala is at once: a showcase of the North-East; a link between County Durham’s communities, past and present; and a celebration of trade unionism and working-class culture.

It is an event that many Durham students don’t get to appreciate—undergraduates are often away from Durham during the summer months and thus miss out on County Durham’s largest celebration of its own history. Each year, hundreds of silk banners representing parts of the county parade from North Road, through Market Square, over Old Elvet Bridge to the racecourse. They are accompanied by brass bands performing their favourite numbers. At the racecourse there are speeches and stalls. The event feels like something between a protest, a festival, and a solemn ceremony remembering the past. Locally it is known as the Big Meeting.

The Big Meeting has only been cancelled a handful of times since its inception in 1871—the Gala did not run during both world wars and it was cancelled in 1921, 22, and 26 because of generalstrikes. And, of course, it did not run in 2020 and 2021. Britain’s biggest celebration of organised labour befell the same fate as Pride events, festivals, and summer weddings. It did not have a zoom equivalent, and it would be hard to replicate the colours of the banners, the depth of the music, and the rousing nature of the northern identity online.

But after a two-year hiatus, the Gala returned in 2022 and was dedicated to key workers: shop staff, teachers, nurses, and bus drivers to name a few. The Durham Miners’ Association billed the events as a “massive demonstration of public support” for “everyone who risked their lives to keep society functioning throughout the pandemic”.

It was a fitting theme, recognising the pandemic’s effects specifically on those whose labour became invaluable over three lockdowns and several on-again, off-again periods of isolation. The theme also had the effect of highlighting that it is these groups of people who form the backbone of organised labour in the twenty-first century. While the coal mining industry of the Northeast has all but disappeared, people working on shop floors or in warehouses or on trains, are the inheritors of the traditions represented at the Miners’ Gala.

Other things are changing at the Gala, too. In 2018 the Durham’s Women’s Gala was revived to celebrate one hundred years of women’s suffrage, and there are more new banners at the Gala depicting women who have been important to the labour movement. When I was at the Gala in July, a woman with light pink hair approached me and invited me to Coalfields Pride the next Saturday. The Gala feels genuinely more diverse than it has in the past. This year, it felt celebratory and forward-looking.

The pandemic forced many people to reckon with parts of their world view: what they thought was essential, and how they wanted to live going forward. The reopening of the last year has not, quite, been a return to business as usual. The world has changed in ways impossible to ignore. Amidst the chaos and loss of the last two years, however, has been the opportunity to stop, think and reassess. For many of us lockdown reinforced the value of traditions, of a reiterated connectivity to the past: I made a private promise to myself that I will not spend a summer without going to a Pride event until I am physically unable to march, or dance.

But coming out of lockdown has also shown how traditions can change, and how they can adapt to a more uncertain future. Being at the Miners’ Gala this year filled me with pride, and hope. I was proud of my region, and of humanity’s ability to celebrate and uplift each other. I was hopeful that, despite the collective trauma of the last two years, human resilience and kindness will continue to shine through wherever and whenever we choose to come together.

Each year, hundreds of silk banners representing parts of the county parade from North Road, through Market Square, over Old Elvet Bridge to the racecourse.