‘It’s pure joy’: Durham Miners’ Gala, the world’s biggest celebration of working class culture

Aged 16, Elliot Dixon held the pride of Murton village on his shoulders. “They said, ‘Elliot, carry this’ and harnessed the banner on to me. I was walking behind the bass drum and brass band with everything bouncing, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and all I could think was, bloody hell, this is amazing.”

For Dixon, now 32, that first time carrying the banner at Durham Miners’ Gala is something he’ll never forget. The annual event – also fondly known as the Big Meeting – is held on the second Saturday in July and lays claim to being the largest celebration of working-class culture in the world, attended by 200,000 people from across the UK and beyond.

This year’s event is particularly significant as 2024 marks the 40t anniversary of the miners’ strike. Margaret Thatcher’s victory paved the way for the closure of most of Britain’s collieries, leaving a legacy of economic and social hardship among working-class communities, including those ex-pit villages like Murton that make up the Durham coalfield.

Those ex-mining villages that feed the vibrant political and artistic culture of the gala are struggling. “Our village wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the pit,” says Chris Nutton, 29, also from Murton. “Parks, shops, businesses – back then it was thriving. Now all that’s just dwindled off.”

Film director Ken Loach, a longtime supporter of the event, says: “What is said at the gala this year is critical. This is where the organised working-class meets and shows the strength of organised labour. We need to be clear on what the political situation is.

“The Labour party are as close to the Tories as it’s possible to get and we need to recognise that publicly. Only then can we end the cruelty of poverty and bring back hope to the working class. Though the mines have gone, that strength is still drawn from across the world at the gala.”

In the years after the strike, there were concerns about the future of the Big Meeting. “When the last pit closed in ’93, the question was whether or not the gala would continue,” says former miner David Temple, 80, who has written a history of the gala.

But support remained steadfast, seen most clearly in the success of the Friends of Durham Miners’ Gala initiative. These supporters are known as marras, a Pitmatic dialect word still in use today that means friend or comrade. The gala is almost entirely funded by Friends of Durham Miners’ Gala, with about half of the funding – £70,000 – coming from donations from individuals.

“When Covid and the economic downturn took place we thought people wouldn’t be able to afford their marra subscriptions,” Temple says. “It’s £24 a year or £2 a month, and if you can’t put food on the table, that’s a lot of money. But it hasn’t declined, which speaks to that northern generosity of spirit.

“Human beings need community and the Big Meeting is the heart and the spirit of the Durham coalfield. It’s bigger than Christmas – a massive family gathering and a day when you meet people who think the same way you do. There are all generations there, from bairns on their parents’ shoulders to elderly people.”

The gala doesn’t just have a wide generational reach, it also has a strong community of international supporters. There are marras in Thailand, the US and Australia, and this year will see a new milestone as South Brisbane Federal Band becomes the first Australian brass band to play there, via a big-screen video performance.

This is a multifaceted event – brass bands, a banner parade, speeches, fairground rides and a religious service all make up this day of celebration and solidarity. Loach proudly shows his marras card when we talk about the speech he gave on the stage at Durham racecourse in 2017. “It was a hugely special moment because I’m a film director,” he says. “I’m not a politician or a union leader. The sense of welcoming is joyous and it was quite emotional.”

While the speeches are a big draw, the parade of banners through Durham city is equally popular. Each one is accompanied by a brass band that stops outside the Royal County Hotel on Elvet Bridge to perform for the dignitaries watching from the balcony.

“The march is pure joy,” Loach says. “Banner after banner following the bands, stacked on top of one another as they come down on to Elvet Bridge.”

In the afternoon, a service is held Durham Cathedral, where new banners or banners from villages commemorating a special event are blessed each year, accompanied by a brass band.

The experience is as reverential for the musicians performing as it is for those attending. “That sound when the bands slow-march in sends shivers down your spine,” says Durham Miners Association Band secretary and tenor horn player, Heather Ward. “The march back out is just as amazing, the congregation and cathedral officials are all clapping and cheering.”

While the music of the gala varies from Get Lucky by Daft Punk and the Village People’s YMCA to more traditional marches and songs, there’s one tune that defines the day. Gresford (The Miners’ Hymn) by Robert Saint, a composer from Hebburn, was written as a memorial to the Gresford colliery disaster in Wales in 1934. The song has since become the anthem of miners and working-class communities in Durham and beyond.

“It’s a musical way of saying we’re all marras together,” Ward says. “It’s a mark of respect and brings the community together. When we played it at one concert in a mining village, everybody in the audience stood up.

“The gala is still going strong because of people’s emotional connection to these communities. Everything was built up around the pits. When they shut and there was nothing put in their place, people rallied around what was left – the history, the memories, the bands and the banners.”

The banners cost upwards of £10,000 and feature roundels that depict symbols, ideals, people and places that are unique to each village’s history. “My mate in Cambridge thinks it’s mad how we all go out and parade our banners every year,” says Nutton who, along with Dixon, is one of the members of the Murton Colliery Banner Group. “I tell him it’s about pride in being where you’re from, the sense of community we have, the traditions we uphold; carrying a banner that’s been paraded for over 100 years by men who fought for everything they had.”

Nowhere is the gala motto of “the past we inherit, the future we build” more applicable than in Murton. After that first experience, Dixon kept carrying the banner. Then, he says, “our Yoda got in touch. He said we needed to set up a banner group and we, the younger generation, needed to front it.”

“Yoda” is ex-miner and Murton Heritage Society founder Geordie Maitland, 80. Keen to preserve one of the “only tangible things left of mining, the collieries and that life and culture”, Maitland encouraged and mentored Nutton and Dixon.

“Without a doubt young people should be involved,” Maitland says. “It’s our past but we can pass that on. Anybody under 35 won’t remember the pits, but we need to make sure they still learn those traditions from parents, relatives and the community. It’s about everybody getting together and celebrating our existence.”

This is just one reason it’s thriving. “Why has the gala endured? Because the objective reality of the class struggle is still alive,” say Loach. “There’s that famous saying, the ruling class can survive any crisis as long as the working class pays the price. And my God, people have paid the price.

“The past we inherit, the future we build; we’ve got to make a reality of that. That past includes the ’84 strike and we can’t build the future unless we acknowledge the ugly reality of what happened. It’s absolutely essential that all this gets passed down because if it doesn’t then you’re not building the future, and you’re not being fair to the heritage you inherit, because you’re not trying to understand it.”

While the focus of the gala is on political understanding and social change, the event is also about connection, community and having a good time with marras old and new. “There’s an old saying if you can remember coming back from the Big Meeting, you haven’t really been,” Maitland says with a grin. “Read into that what you will.”