David Temple a life long mineworker and Union militant deserves every praise possible for this truly excellent work.

"The Big Meeting :

A History Of The Durham Miners’ Gala"

The title doesn’t do this book justice because, as well as being a history of the Durham Miners’ Gala, it is a history of coal-mining in the country and a social history of our towns and villages.

The first gala was on August 12, 1871, when the inhabitants of Durham’s deep countryside mines invaded the city, much to the trepidation of its residents.
“Durham’s pit folk were a race apart, living in isolated villages, cheek by jowl with the constant clatter of winding engines, engulfed by the sulfurous fumes of the ventilation furnaces and the ever-present wind-borne dust,” writes David Temple, introducing the miners as heroes.

That first gala passed without the drunken unruliness that the city-folk feared, and it cemented the Durham Miners’ Association as a union that was not going to crumble as previous workers’ attempts had.

"The Big Meeting: A History Of The Durham Miners’ Gala"

The second gala the following year was possibly the happiest of all the 127 Big Meetings. As many as 70,000 miners paraded behind bands and banners to the racecourse, celebrating that the hated bond, that tied miner to colliery, had been broken, and that wages had risen 30 per cent.
Plus, the long-promised Mines Regulation Bill, which would improve underground conditions, was only weeks away.

All achieved in a year or so by the power of unity.

Compare that to the 1926 gala – perhaps the lowest of all 127 Big Meetings. The miners’ opposition to a proposed increase in the working day of more than an hour and a reduction of 30 per cent in wages was summed up by the slogan: “Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.”

The TUC called the General Strike to support the miners’ action, but after nine days it was called off leaving the miners to fight alone.

The betrayal permeates the book, and gives it a roller-coaster feel that was so typical of a miner’s life: boom and then bust, strike and lockout.

Written by a former Murton Colliery lodge official, who was victimized for his union membership, it is a very political book. The Tories have “selfish and antisocial policies” and Tony Blair is little better. That, though, adds a rhetorical realism that the those attending the first Big Meeting would have understood.

source : The Northern Echo