DURHAM CATHEDRAL AND THE MINERS' GALA: The Essence of England (12)

[This is the twelfth of a series of articles giving a brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]

Durham Cathedral, high on its hill overlooking the River Wear, is a majestic sight. It is certainly the finest Norman (Romanesque) building in England and many say it is the finest Romanesque building in the world. The Cathedral brings cosmopolitan beauty to the historically industrial far North of England, making it an unforgettable and unmissable destination.

Durham Cathedral

The Nave at Durham

Begun in 1093, the bulk of the cathedral church was completed within 40 years. The nave, with its deeply incised columns, quire and transepts are all Norman. At the west end is the unique twelfth-century late Norman style Galilee Chapel, almost Moorish in spirit and first intended as a Lady Chapel: at the east end the thirteenth-century Chapel of the Nine Altars for pilgrims is in the soaring Gothic style.

The Galilee Chapel

The western towers date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the great Perpendicular Gothic central tower dates from the fifteenth century. The Cloister, on the south side of the Cathedral, was begun at the same time as the Cathedral but contains much work from the fifteenth century or later.

The cathedral was partly built to re-house the Shrine of St Cuthbert (634-687), moved from Viking-infested Lindisfarne, a much venerated saint in medieval times. He was entombed with the head of the Northumbrian king St Oswald (604-642). The remains of The Venerable Bede (672-735) are also among the treasured relics of the cathedral (the modern mind often does not care for these sorts of thing) and there is also an important manuscript library.

Thus the Cathedral is an architectural masterpiece, steeped in history with the adjacent Castle and the distinguished University (England’s third oldest) nestling nearby.
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The Gala Procession

 On the second Saturday in July, more or less every year since 1871, the Durham Miners’ Gala (always pronounced “Gayla”) takes place. It is a display of working-class solidarity, with miners joined by many other trades unionists; as many as 300,000 came in the heyday of the Gala in the early 1950s.
The men processed through Durham, past the Royal County Hotel where NUM, Labour Party and TUC leaders reviewed them from the balcony, carrying their colliery banners and marching behind their cherished brass bands to the racecourse to hear many fiery political speeches before dispersing with their families for a picnic or relaxing in a pub.

A Gala banner featuring Lenin

The Gala naturally reflected the fortunes of Britain’s miners, first connected in a federation of local unions but later consolidated into the National Union of Mineworkers (the “NUM”). The miners were always a proudly intransigent group, close-knit from living in pit-side colliery villages with little contact with other people, hardened from working in a strenuous, dirty and dangerous trade.

Their working conditions had been appalling. Until the 1860s most miners worked under a “bond” system, tying them to particular employers at low wages. The employers, the private mine-owners, were famously uncaring and exploitative. Britain had vast reserves of coal and its large navy and merchant fleet depended upon it. The industry was huge, employing 1.2 m people in 1914, supplying coke to steelworks, steam coal for the railways and industry and domestic coal to most citizens. Yet its productivity was declining as US, German and Polish competition grew and Britain’s return to the gold Standard in the 1920s priced her out of traditional export markets. A financial crisis in 1926 led to a bitter dispute, culminating in the failed General Strike. The miners, now down to 800,000 had to accept a cut in wages. Lord Birkenhead observed at the time that he thought the miners’ leaders were the stupidest men in England, until he met the mine-owners.

The industry shrank in the 1930s slump but new hope for coal revived when Labour nationalised the mines by establishing the National Coal Board in 1947. About 704,000 miners produced 188m tonnes of coal in 958 pits.  The men were better paid and automation reduced the physical burdens even if it cut the numbers employed. Safety standards improved but mining was still dangerous; 83 miners died at the Easington disaster in 1951 in the Durham coalfield; the nation was heart-broken when 144 (including 116 junior school children) were killed when a coal tip collapsed at Aberfan in 1966. The accident was blamed on the NCB’s faulty tipping policies.

The decline of coal was inexorable. Clean Air legislation limited the use of domestic coal: railways converted to Diesel; natural gas was widely used after North Sea oil was discovered; Australian and South African coal was much cheaper: power stations converted to oil or to nuclear energy. Subsidies to the coal industry rose apace. A gradual trading down of coal on sensible terms could have been negotiated but attitudes were uncompromising. National strikes in 1972 and 1974, claiming “differentials were being eroded” in the union jargon of the time, won the men pay rises making them the highest paid industrial workers. Heath had to impose a 3-Day Week in both years, then called and lost an election. The Conservatives did not forget this lesson.

Joe Gormley

Arthur Scargill

                                    

The public usually had much residual sympathy for the miners and leader Joe Gormley in 1972 and 1974 was reasonably popular. His successor Arthur Scargill was a more extreme and confrontational figure, chippy and ideologically committed to his revolutionary dreams.

The NCB, now run by Ian MacGregor, a drastic rationaliser at British Steel, proposed a programme of closure for over 20 uneconomic pits. The government had prepared its ground well, should a strike be provoked. It had built up large coal stocks at power stations, the law had been changed to outlaw secondary picketing and a union’s assets could be sequestered if it broke the law. Scargill wanted a battle and called a national miners strike on 12 March 1984 to protect jobs, critically without holding a ballot. This offended some NUM members and the union was split with the Nottingham miners refusing to strike and only lukewarm support in some other areas.

The dispute was very bitter. Police were drafted in to militant Yorkshire from outside forces and fought the miners with the same violence they themselves suffered. A mass picket at the Orgreave Coke Works in June 1984 was broken up with many injured. Public opinion moved against the miners. Coal and coke moved freely, there was no power crisis or 3-Day Week. The men stayed out, unpaid, for just short of 12 months. They and their families, usually denied social security, suffered real poverty and deprivation. Some drifted back to work, despite being labelled “Scabs!” .On 3 March 1985 the strike ended having achieved nothing.

Margaret Thatcher in her prime

For Margaret Thatcher’s government, the defeat of the miners was a defining moment. The NUM was done for. Pit closures were accelerated so that by 2006 the industry was a pitiful shadow of its former self producing a tiny 10,000 tons in only 13 pits with a labour force of 4,000. The NCB was privatised. The wider trades union movement was greatly weakened with membership plummeting. The book was closing on the fraught history of British mining to general relief.  Old loyalties and emotions still run high with many blighted lives yet to be soothed and rebuilt.

The Durham Miners’ Gala continues to be held. Neil Kinnock addressed it in 1989 but Tony Blair saw that his New Labour rebranding did not include fawning on organised labour, so he stayed away – as did awkward Gordon Brown. Ed Miliband came in 2012, but he was only going through the motions, in deference to Labour sentimentality. The world has moved on.



SMD
8.11.12
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012