The dual necessities of pleasure-seeking in the sunshine, but then having to do the most dangerous job in the world seemed as inevitable as night and day. One is the pleasures of the Gala; another deals with deadly issues at “The Big Meeting”. They come as a package, two sides of the same coin and each as valuable as each other.
Bill Corcoran
As some may have seen on Notes, a couple of weeks back, I went along to what we call in the Northeast of England the 'Durham Big Meeting' and in the rest of the country, 'The Durham Miner's Gala'.
We probably call it the Big Meeting to avoid the local argument about how to pronounce the word, Gala. The debate is whether to pronounce the first syllable as if a 'y' followed the first 'a'. Or as if followed by an 'r'. Given the Northeastern predilection for hardening vowels, you might be surprised that many in the Northeast pronounce the word as if followed by a 'y' (my mother and grandfather did). But there are also those like me (and my father) who do not. And strangely enough, even the 'y' people will pronounce the word as if with an 'r' when using the word in another context. Some might liken it to the debate on pronouncing the word scone. However, there's no debate on that one in the Northeast. It rhymes with gone. It always has and always will do.
So, I'll stick with using the term Big Meeting, the first of which occurred in 1871, organised by the Durham Miners Association. The DMA was one of the many unions at the time that looked to stand for the interests of coal miners. That first meeting aimed to celebrate and recognise the contribution made by miners, but I suspect it was also a recruitment drive for the DMA. It had formed two years earlier, and its membership increased rapidly to four thousand. That didn't last; membership had fallen to around two thousand by that first Big Meeting. There are no records of how many people attended, but estimates are that it was more than ten thousand. Whether it was that first Big Meeting or for another reason, the ranks of the DMA then swelled in future years. Attendance at the Big Meeting peaked in the early 1900s and drew some three hundred thousand people to Durham. Dwarfing the local population of some forty thousand. Even though all the mines in the Northeast are gone, the event still attracts around two hundred thousand people.
Given my grandfather was a coal miner for some fifty years, it will be no surprise that he was a regular attendee at this annual event, and from the late 1960s, I joined him each year until I left the Northeast in 1974. This year was the first time I've attended the meeting since then.
I have several rich memories of those days at the Big Meeting with my grandfather. One was his pride in being with present and past mining comrades from pits across the Durham area and beyond. Another was the ornate and colourfully decorated banners from each mining 'lodge' (the local branch of the union at every pit) that carried scenes of mining or famous social reformers. Finally, the parade of those banners, with many still-working miners marching behind their lodge banner accompanied by colliery brass bands while packed tightly on Durham’s narrow streets, the miner's families, friends, and others cheered the procession along.
After the procession, I'd sit enthralled while listening to my grandad and his comrades telling stories, over a pint, of their life in the mines from the Edwardian era to nationalisation in 1947. It also bemused me at the time as to why those miners spoke disdainfully and with some degree of anger toward a long-dead chap I then knew nothing of called Lord Londonderry (more on him later).
Early in my recent visit, I noticed a deep contrast between the mood of the parade now and what I remembered of those earlier visits. In the late 1960s / early 1970s, pit closures accelerated, throwing a rapidly increasing number of men out of work. The air of the meeting was, therefore, downbeat but defiant. These were the days when Chris Killip, Tish Murtha and others captured that spirit well in their Northeast photographs. This year's march was a far more boisterous affair than that of those decades ago. It recognised the history, achievements, and togetherness of the broader community. But more than that, it offered attendees an opportunity to show their support for such causes as peoples' freedom from prejudice and better social justice (it wouldn't be the Northeast without a bit of that).
As well as the spirit of the parade, there was a marked difference in the dress of those who took part. Many of those men marching fifty years ago dressed traditionally in glistening shoes and boots, tired suits, crisp shirts with a tie, all topped off with the ubiquitous flat cap. Women wore their best floral summer dresses, while the children had scrubbed faces and were made to wear their better clothes. When once there was that uniformity to the clothes everyone wore, now people dressed in clothes of every style, shape and colour—T-shirts, shorts, crop tops, trainers and the like and not a hat in sight. Yet something tells me that those old miners in their shiny boots and care-worn suits who marched those decades ago wouldn't have minded a bit. Indeed, my grandfather, even though born a Victorian, took a relaxed view of such things, being happy for me to wear jeans and a sweatshirt to the event. Something that my father, even though born a later Edwardian, took a more 'old-school' approach and would never allow such dress whenever I went with him somewhere.
Where once the parade was of only the mining lodge's banners, there is now a representation of a whole array of working people. Those heritage banners of the miners were joined by banners of today’s trades and crafts, such as health workers, firefighters, railway workers, merchant sailors, and office workers etc. Also, as my photograph of the banner depicting Grace Darling shows, the march included other social causes and campaigns.
Grace Darling has been a hero of mine ever since I first heard her story as a small boy. I suspect Grace and her story are not so well known outside of the Northeast of England, so here's a brief telling of it.
Grace was born in 1815 in Northumberland, and not long after, her family moved to the Farne islands, where her father was a lighthouse keeper. As she grew, Grace helped her father with his duties and then on September 7, 1838, a terrible storm hit the northeast coast of England, wrecking a ship called the Forfarshire on the rocks near her father's lighthouse. The weather was too rough to launch the lifeboat from a nearby town, so Grace and her father set out in a rowing boat that could stay closer to the shore. While many onboard the Forfarshire perished, Grace and her father saved nine people, including a baby. For a while afterwards, people hailed Grace as a national hero. Still, all fame is fleeting, and she sadly died two years after the rescue, aged only twenty-six. With all respect to the many mining banners on display at the parade, when I came across this showing Grace, I knew it would be the one I would use for this piece.
Many mines formed brass bands, and despite the closing of those mines, some of their brass bands continued, although the players these days are not the working miners of the past. In this parade, as they have always done, the bands marched between separate groups of workers. It was also good to hear the traditional sound of those bands supplemented by various music and rhythms of several other bands interspersed among the marchers. Joining these were dancers, and all reflected the multicultural aspect of today's Northeast.
With its narrow, twisting and turning streets, Durham is not ideal for such a large parade. It means lining up those marching on several streets converging on a well-known local hotel. The marchers then take turns to wind their way past that hotel from whose balcony various 'dignitaries' applaud, wave, and join in the singing. Inevitably there are hold-ups, but these allow the various bands to entertain the crowd. One of the most moving moments for me was the singing of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' by thousands of those gathered. I was one of those thousands infectiously caught up in the singing, and in my mind (and yes, I'm biased), those Geordie voices outdid anything offered at Anfield before a Liverpool game.
Once the parade ended, attention turned to the Miners Festival Service in Durham Cathedral. One does not have to be a believer to feel captivated by a different type of pageantry from that usually associated with royalty, with some of the mining banners carried into the Cathedral for a blessing. I found the visual spectacle of the ceremony evocative, and it triggered fond memories of my grandfather. But that wasn't the end of the festivities as the Durham Racecourse became the scene of various live music and dance entertainments. There were also food stalls and a variety of activities for children.
The one contradictory element of the Big Meeting is that while it's held in a left-leaning city with solid trade union connections, there sits in its central marketplace, beside which the parade passes, a massive statue of an anti-union Tory mine owner who did more than any other to exploit the miners of Victorian times. He is the antithesis of Grace Darling in his lack of care and compassion for others. In his book 'Full English' Stuart Maconie offers the case for hauling down Colston-like, the statue to Charles William Stewart Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, and throwing it in the River Wear. I would not go that far, but when it proved necessary a few years ago to move the statue, it should have been to a museum rather than simply a few feet along the marketplace.
As I mentioned earlier, and despite Londonderry’s death some one hundred years before, in the miner’s conversations I was privy to some fifty years ago, they rarely used his name, referring to him as 'the man on the horse'. And as seen in Stuart Maconie's book, he is still a figure of disdain even today.
Londonderry was a ruthless employer and staunch opponent of the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842, aimed at improving the working conditions in coal mines because he felt it would interfere with the 'free market'. He also supported using children younger than twelve to work in the coal mines.
Londonderry's coal mines were notorious for their poor working conditions. He paid the miners low wages for long hours in a dangerous and unhealthy environment that saw many accidents and many miners killed and injured. When the miners struck to improve conditions, Londonderry told local merchants to whom he was the landlord that he would evict any who supplied striking miners with goods. To break the strike, he also brought in unemployed Cornish tin miners and men from his massive estates in Ireland to work in his mines. These impoverished people jumped at the chance of earning a living no matter the conditions, not realising the impact on the miners and their families in the Northeast. Those doing the work of the striking miners soon became hated by the local people who, rather than starve, felt forced to go back to work in Londonderry's mines, usually on lower pay than before. My grandfather told me that in his younger days in the late 1800s, there was still a somewhat anti-Irish feeling in the Northeast due to Londonderry’s actions.
Londonderry made vast profits as a coal mine owner expanding through marriage his northeast landholding to include the town of Seaham, where to deprive Sunderland of trade and reduce his costs of coal transportation, he built the harbour that grew to be the town of Seaham Harbour. He was a vocal critic of the Chartist movement that looked, among other things, to extend the right to vote to 'ordinary' people. He also stood against catholic emancipation in Ireland. During the Irish Potato Famine, he gave only £30 towards famine relief while spending £150,000 renovating his Irish mansion, Mount Stewart.
Anyway, enough of the man on the horse. I very much enjoyed the wonderful experience of seeing and being a tiny part of the Big Meeting again, especially as it is now such a vibrant celebration with hundreds of thousands of people coming together to recognise the industrial past of the Northeast and its hope for the future. A memorable occasion for families and friends to celebrate their shared history, culture, and values.
Curious to ask. Do you have any snapshots of your father home from the mines, or in his garb? Curious also his health over the years. 50 years is not a long, lost weekend. It must have cost him dearly at some point?
Such an interesting read Harry! Thank you 🙏