Mining

Here's a joke.

Billy and Harry are miners from County Durham. They win the lottery and decide to take a world cruise.

The crowds, bands, dogs and all at the racecourse.

The cruise ship sinks. They're the only survivors and they're washed up on an idyllic desert island.

After many months, Billy turns to Harry and says: "Do you know what day it is?"

"That's easy", says Harry. "I've been carving notches in a tree every day, so I know it's a Saturday."

"It's not just any Saturday," says Billy.

"It's Durham Miners' Gala Saturday."

Harry looks to the shimmering blue sky and says: "Lovely day for it." Ho ho ho.

It's 'gay-ler'

The Durham coalfield was made redundant. The men who went down its pits were made redundant. But the joke still has currency, because it encapsulates an age and a simplicity of spirit which shaped entire communities.

It is this spirit that means we still have, albeit in a different form, the Durham Miners' Gala.

By the way, when used in this context, the word "gala" must be pronounced correctly.

It is not "gar-la". It is "gay-ler". Don't ask me why.

Since its inception, the county's miners and their families have pronounced it this way and they, we, will not be swayed.

In the days when caps were the thing to wear.

As a child, I was as excited by the approach of Miners' Gala day as I was by the approach of Christmas.

Every penny that could be scrounged and saved would be counted and recounted as the day got nearer.

The total was always boosted on Thursday or Friday by kindly relatives, who would give you a tidy little sum - "For the Gala". And, on the Friday night before you went to bed for a sleepless night, by your dad. "So ye shouldn't gan short. And if ye dee gan short, ye can run to yer mother, not me."

Out of bed early and off to meet the buses.

You and all the other children in summer gladrags. Your dad and all the other dads booted and suited in binge-drinking chic. 

Your mam and all the other mams in flowery frocks and laden with flasks of tea and sandwiches (chopped pork in our case - my dad wouldn't contemplate anything else).

He took them down the pit every day and, when I was 18, I asked him why he never changed. "That would be daft. Yer mother's got the hang of making them like this,” he told me.

Durham Miners' Gala parading through the city.

On the outskirts of Durham City, we would spill out from the buses next to families from Bearpark, Murton, Easington, Dawdon, Eppleton... all of them communities which, like Castletown, existed only because of coal.

Then came the colliery banner, a riot of silk and socialist sentiment suspended from two mahogany poles and carried with a pride which shone in the faces of the pole-bearers.

Gresford

And behind the banner, the band.

Like every other pit, Castletown (or Hylton Colliery, to give it its Sunday name) had a band made up of miners, former miners, and the children of miners.

Lots of tom-tiddle-di-pom and, of course, Gresford, the miners' hymn, which was written by a man who himself was a Durham miner in commemoration of a disaster at Gresford pit in Wales in 1934.    
 
Just time to shove all the little boys behind bushes to relieve themselves of their, er, excitement, and it was time for the walk down the hill into the city.

The pavements all lined, the windows all bursting with faces and every year, on the balcony of the County Hotel, the prime minister himself - and everybody clapping me. Or so I believed.

By the age of six, it began to dawn on me that perhaps the claps were also for the countless legions accompanying me on this march. Still, it's nice to share.

A quick message from your mother: "Remember where I'm sitting, and don't pester your dad." A quick message from your dad: "Remember, if ye need owt, see yer mother."

And you were off with your mates, tumbling into the jumble of fairground rides, freak shows and sweet stalls.

The Benn effect

Were things really so politically incorrect in the late 60s?

One tent housed a bearded lady, a child with three legs (pickled in formaldehyde, would you believe) and another tent housed a stripper, for heaven's sake.

I think I was about 10 or 11 when I managed to sneak into this one. To my horror, among the audience was one of my dad's friends, but the wink he gave me quickly assured me he wouldn't tell.

Spent up, sunburned and simply exhausted, it was time to stoke up on chopped pork sandwiches and then go to listen to the speeches.

Tony Benn seemed to be among the speakers every year - perhaps he really was there every year - and he was lionised by the miners.

He had an effect on me, too.

The sound of his voice still makes me feel as if I've eaten too much ice cream. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

Watch archive footage of the 1939 Big Meeting: