In July we will host the 139th Durham Miners Gala, and we are looking forward to greeting old friends and new from across the county and far beyond.
Reform UK, who in the May elections won control of Durham County Council – benefiting from protest votes and a very low (34.8%) turnout – have chosen to criticise us publicly for not inviting them to the Gala. They obviously don’t understand how this works, so we will explain.
Everyone in Durham is welcome at the Gala.
But we invite on to the platform, and as guests at the DMA’s social events, some of our many friends who share our beliefs in community, in the labour movement and in social justice. The Reform UK councillors do not.
Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, is an enemy of the National Health Service.
For years he has advocated moving away from the current funding model (99% from general taxation and National Insurance contributions) to an insurance-based system, under which people pay premiums to cover the treatment they need. This would be the biggest blow yet to the public service model of health care.
Nigel Farage claims he wants to “reindustrialise” the UK.
That is cheap talk. He has always praised the Tory assault on coal, steel, shipbuilding and other industries, and said in a recent interview: “I supported Margaret Thatcher’s reforms of the economy. It was painful for some but it had to happen.”
Reform UK claim to be on the side of trade unionists.
More cheap talk. In April, all four of its MPs voted against the employment rights bill, aimed at banning zero-hours contracts and giving staff the right to sick pay from the start of their employment. (Most Reform UK voters, unlike their MPs, support such measures.) And Reform UK’s 2024 election manifesto is clear: the party wants to “make it easier to hire and fire” workers.
Reform UK wants to redouble the Tory attack on local government services.
Council spending was slashed by the Tories in the 2010s, and today councils still only spend about four fifths per person of what they spent in 2010; in deprived areas, even less.
To protect spending on statutory services (e.g. social care), many councils cut other services (e.g. leisure, housing, libraries and transport) by more than 40%. But Nigel Farage said in May this year he wants to “reduce the scale of local government back to what it ought to be”.
He said he wants to copy DOGE – Elon Musk’s disastrous Department of Government Efficiency that has slashed thousands of jobs in the USA – “in every county”.
Reform UK is a party of the wealthy, for the wealthy.
Its 2024 election manifesto proposed sweeping tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the rich, e.g. cutting the main corporation tax rate to 20% and then 15%. Hardly surprising from a party led by Nigel Farage, a stockbroker’s son who worked as a metals trader in the City, and went from being the highest-earning Member of the European Parliament to being the highest-earning MP at Westminster.
Last year, on top of his £91,346 MP’s salary, Farage earned £1.2 million, including £81,607 from GB News for 32 hours’ work (a rate of more than £2500 per hour).
Reform UK never misses an opportunity to kick down on migrants fleeing war, persecution or poverty – but its leader advises millionaires on how to migrate to countries where they pay less tax.
In September last year, Nigel Farage was paid £40,075.37 to speak at an event in Kuala Lumpur staged by the Nomad Capitalist company, that advises wealthy people on how to get second or third passports to reduce their tax bills. So much for his worries about the “global elite”!
Reform UK is a fan club for the bully Donald Trump and the mass murderer Vladimir Putin.
Nigel Farage travelled to the US to support Trump in his election campaign in 2016, and again last year. During Trump’s first term as president, Farage supported his outbursts against Muslims and worked with Steve Bannon, the far-right organiser behind Trump.
Asked in an interview about his political idols, Farage said, “Putin. The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant.”
The Russian intervention in Syria, to support its bloodthirsty dictator Bashar al-Assad and his massacres of political opponents, cost thousands of lives.
Reform UK are happy for nasty racists to serve as councillors on their behalf.
Steven Biggs (councillor for Pelton) once said on social media that “Islam has no place on this earth. One big nuke bomb needed!” – and in May this year turned down an invitation by ITV reporter Tom Sheldrick to retract that.
Darren Grimes (Annfield Plain and Tanfield) was accused of Islamophobia for social media posts last year. His supporters’ group on Facebook is an open sewer of racism and support for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”), the serial liar and racist head of the “English Defence League”.
Jackie Teasdale (Delves Lane) has also expressed support for Yaxley-Lennon.
These divisive, hate-filled people have benefited from the collapse of the Tory party, and from the Labour Party’s failure to defend basic labour principles on welfare benefits, jobs and social justice.
In fact the Labour government has swung sharply to the right, and embraced Reform UK’s rhetoric that blames social crisis and hardship not on Tory misrule, tax breaks for the rich and austerity policies, but on immigration.
We in the DMA will not be going down that road. We have not and will not abandon our principles.
And so Reform UK councillors will not be invited as our guests to the Gala.
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For more than a century, the Gala was funded by the working miners of the Durham coalfield. Following the closure of our collieries is is funded by donation and subscription from ordinary people who believe in the Gala and are determined to keep it going. Those who support the Gala are known as Marras - a Durham Miners' term for a trusted friend or comrade.
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