Keep your hand upon your wages and your eye upon the scale
Yesterday was the Durham Miner's Gala, once the largest political gatherings in Europe that brought 250,000 people to the tiny, twisted streets of Durham. Durham was one of the coal centers of Britain along with south Wales, and many of the little villages around it wouldn't exist without it. Almost all coal mining has packed up in the last 25 years, along with the wool factories of Bradford and the manufacturing of Manchester and Leeds. Most of the collieries had their own brass bands, like the towns of south Wales had their all-male choirs that still bring a disproportionate number of great voices from that region. Every year the miners still march through Durham with their banners (some over 100 years old) and their still-vibrant brass bands. There's less and less every year, and most of them are quite old now, but their children and grandchildren join the bands and at least for Miner's Gala. We went and took a few pictures, so I figured I'd share them.
One of the first bands we came across was a Mexican brass band, complete with Zarape blankets. As soon as they rolled up by the first crowd, there was immediate screaming and enthusiasm. It confused me - what were they doing at a miner's rally in northeast England? Were they miners? Were they famous and Elliott and I are just silly? Why were they being filmed by a news crew? Was the crowd just really excited to listen to a different sort of brass music? I have no answers to these questions, but we were quickly sucked into the enthusiasm because they kicked ass!
On the balcony of the Marriott there were various notables (including the Durham mayor, who ducked out after 5 minutes) and the bands would stop under them and play a piece or two. A choir stopped, the only one I saw, and sang Union Miners Stand Together. A man on the balcony sang along and there were people in the crowd raising fists with him.
"Watch the rocks they're falling daily, careless miners always fail,
Keep your hand upon your wages and your eye upon the scale.
Union miners stand together, do not heed the owner's tale,
Keep your hand upon your wages and your eye upon the scale."
When the Mexican band came past the balcony, the policemen got the crowd to crowd wave (which in England is apparently called the Mexican wave. Is that an American thing too??). Then, in a moment of exquisite irony, a band played YMCA and the policemen were doing all the right movements to that!
The firemen definitely had the coolest banner I think!
I was impressed with myself for only getting mildly irritable in all the crowds. It doesn't take much for Durham to fill up, and as you see we were legion. I want to know what the attendance was - a few years ago it hit 50,000 on the 125th anniversary of the gala, but people were saying it wasn't well-attended this year.
There were also banners for teaching unions, and a lot of banners for what looked like social services (to support all the now-unemployed miners, hmmm...). It's definitely a somewhat sour event now - a few local friends avoid it because of the painful nostalgia. Not that coal-mining was all that great, but there's really no jobs like that in the northeast now - places where under-educated people can work hard at a difficult job and feel as if they're providing something for Britain. Now it's call centers, or social care for the elderly and helpless, or housekeeping. In an area where gender roles haven't loosened as much as other areas of Britain, I think this leads to a pretty emasculated male population. Someone was holding a sign saying "Give Coal a Chance," as if it was an industry that might revive if people were just a bit more open-minded. The head of the British Labour Party used to speak at the Gala, but the party has a much more ambivalent relationship with large unionized industries since Blair's New Labour group took power. I was chatting to a woman on the bus today as Elliott and I returned from a shopping trip, and she seemed really bitter about Blair and Gordon Brown - as if the region was sold out. I think there's a lot of people who feel that way.
On the way to visit a flat for rent today I saw a cool view of Durham Cathedral over the roofs, so I'll end with that:
