Running time: 12 mins 10 secs
A quarter of a million people attended the Durham Miners Gala this year, making it the biggest one for years – and a clear rejection of Reform UK, who now run the council in County Durham (with only a third of the vote, in an election where most people didn’t vote at all) and had called on people not to go after their councillors weren’t invited to speak on the platform.
As the Durham Miners Association pointed out, they were free to attend the Gala and march with everyone else if they wanted, but the DMA were hardly likely to invite people onto the platform who are against every principle that they stand for.
The NEU education union had their biggest contingent on the march ever with over thirteen branches represented. Members of Durham NEU explain in the video exactly what Reform UK stand for – and how are they are working in their communities and schools to combat their politics of hate and division, a politics that will do nothing for communities that have been decimated by years of attacks by the Tory government, and are now being shafted by a Labour government.
With Durham NEU starting exciting new initiatives with National Women’s Action for Positive Change (the legacy group from Women Against Pit Closures), and the DMA planning a new solidarity economy through their Redhills miners hall, there is an alternative (info about how to get involved towards the end of the video).
As Heather Wood from Women Against Pit Closures says, “If governments are not going to do stuff for us, we’ll do it ourselves – like we’ve always done.”
