Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #DurhamMinersGala

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The great Jennie Lee, radical and rebel, founder of the @OpenUniversity, the youngest woman MP, and Gala speaker, was born #OnThisDay in 1904.

A miner’s daughter from Lochgelly, Fife, she graduated from Edinburgh University and became a school teacher. (1/7)
Aged 24, in March 1929 Lee became the youngest woman elected MP, representing North Lanarkshire.

In her maiden speech, she attacked the Chancellor Winston Churchill over his “cant, corruption, and incompetence”. In July that year, she spoke for the first time at the Gala. (2/7)
Lee was a leading opponent of the ‘Great Betrayal’ of 1931, when Ramsay MacDonald led sections of the Labour Party into National Government with the Tories.

When she returned to speak at the Gala the following year, she said…(3/7)
Read 7 tweets
Today should have been 136th #DurhamMinersGala but for Covid 19. There is an everlasting bond between the #BigMeeting and @durhamcathedral with the annual Miners’ Festival Service. The Haswell Lodge banner, from 1893, is on permanent display there. Image
@durhamcathedral There was a devastating explosion at Haswell in 1844. A total of 95 men and boys died in this accident which was believed to have been caused by methane gas, aka firedamp, coming into contact with a naked flame. Only 4 miners survived. The new Haswell banner commemorates them.
@durhamcathedral Like many events #DurhamMinersGala needs £ support. If you can help it get through, go to friendsofdurhamminersgala.org/join_us
@DurhamMiners
Read 3 tweets
Read this comment, and sign the petition. It's time to remove Jewish Labour Movement from the Labour party affiliation as they're working against the party. chng.it/HhqCQ87Y via @UKChange
In the image we are informed that a former head of the EHRC states #Islamophobia should not be investigated
@RespectIsVital also reports that The EHRC have confirmed receipt of a tranche of data sent implicating Tim Dexter in failure to investigate complaints about a variety of issues inc issues of data theft by LAAS & Euan Philips threatening behaviour.
Read 8 tweets
“Suddenly there was silence. The colours danced, but everything else was still. For the banner we now saw was draped in black…”

Easington Lodge at the #DurhamMinersGala, just weeks after the Easington Colliery Disaster which claimed the lives of 83 men #OnThisDay in 1951. (1/3)
The Labour MP JPW Mallalieu wrote a moving account of what he saw at that year’s Gala: “Through the silence the Easington Band began to play Gresford. When the tune came to an end there was again silence until Old Elvet gently relaxed his hold and there was space to move." (2/3)
"The great crowd set up a storm of cheering that could be heard in Paradise, dancers cavorted again & sunshine wiped away all thought of tears. Miners rub shoulders with death. They know how to face death. Last Saturday I saw, too, that they will not let death spoil life." (3/3)
Read 3 tweets

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