The exhibition of Miners’ Banners in Durham Cathedral commemorates the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. Miners’ banners, often made from silk are “escribed as the regimental colours of the National Union of Mineworkers”. Each colliery had its own banner with the name of the lodge and other images hand painted upon it, to easily identity the colliery it represented.
There was a succession of banners. Many earlier banners had religious images or quotations from the Bible, including images of David and Goliath, the Good Samaritan and “Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me.” These religious images emanated from the strong presence of Methodism, particularly Primitive Methodism in County Durham at the time, an influence which helped develop radical trade unions.
Men like Thomas Hepburn, Robert Smillie a Scottish Trade Unionist, Keir Hardie, A.J.Cook and Peter Lee are still prominent in the more recent banners on display in the cathedral.
Thomas Hepburn
Thomas Hepburn worked from the age of eight after the death of his father in a pit accident. When a coal hewer in 1822, he became a Methodist lay preacher. He worked all his life to improve the lived of miners and their families and founded the Collieries United of Durham and Northumberland. He is still remembered in an annual memorial service.
Peter Lee
Peter Lee, born 1864, earned 10d a week working ten hours a day underground at the age of ten. He was a Methodist lay preacher. He eventually became a member of Durham County Council becoming Chair in 1919 as well as agent of the DMA progressing to general secretary and then president of the MFGB. He was so well respected that the New Town of Peterlee was named after him.
The banners
The religious theme does continue. Banners have pictures of Durham Cathedral. Horden’s banner features its fine church locally called the ‘Miners’ Cathedral’. Rough Lea, one of the older banners, hails from 1890. “Peace and Friendship” is illustrated by a child, sitting astride a lion, holding a small sheaf of corn whilst about to feed a lamb nestling in front of the lion. The reverse of this banner has the image of the Good Samaritan and the words, “Bear ye one another’s burdens” and “Blessed is he that considereth the poor.”
Later banners included more recent names. Blackhall banner features Tony Benn, Elemore George Lansbury, Horden’s Emmanuel Shinwell M.P., Hugh Gaitskill and Washington’s Nye Bevan. Chopwell includes Keir Hardie but as it was known as ‘Little Moscow’ has portraits of Marx and Lenin featured on its banner.
New Brancepeth’s banner portrays Aesop’s fable of the sticks, signifying unity is strength. Dawdon’s banner has two figures; a miner holding a lamp holding the hand of the classically dressed figure of Peace who is holding an olive branch in her other hand. The panel between them is decorated with the scales of Justice. A dove flies in the sky and fruit lies beneath their feet. Although the early banners emphasised helping others in the community, like the development of Aged Miners’ Homes in Bear Park’s banner as well as other Primitive Methodist ideals, later banners moved towards the ideals of socialism and the Labour Party. The heroes of the past intermingle with the political heroes of more recent Labour Party politicians.
The Miners’ Gala
The Miners’ Gala, the Big Meeting began in 1871 becoming, “the largest unofficial miners and trade union gathering in the United Kingdom.” The Guardian newspaper on 12 July 2013 wrote;
“Tomorrow, Durham’s narrow streets will be thronged with thousands of people, young and old, from the country’s pit villages. Miners’ Gala Day, the Big Meeting, is a celebration of the industry that has stamped its mark forever on the landscapes and memories of County Durham.” That is still true today.
A fine National Trust coastal walk, goes past Blackhall. Blackhall’s banner contains traces of a polluted beach, once filmed in “Get Carter” and the flight that tipped waste onto the beach and into the sea. Posters at Seaham have reminders of the past state of Blast beach.
A sense of belonging
What about the close communities of a colliery village? Sinking in Horden Colliery began in 1900. Workers and their families came from near and far to work in this deep pit. Colliery houses with numbered streets were rapidly constructed. The village soon gelled into a community merged into a sense of belonging around the heart of the village, the colliery. Once the colliery was gone, the community struggled to survive, but visit its numbered streets to today and you will discover boarded up houses and dereliction. The village had lost its heart and there was no transplant of employment to ensure survival of a once thriving community.
Black draping
The Gala still happens but there is no black draping ribbon on its banners, ribbons that commemorated a death at the colliery. Mining was an extreme occupation, hence the reference to its banner being a “regimental colour”. A plaque in the Cathedral reminds us of all those killed in mining. Remember Gresford where 254 bodies were entombed after a wall of fire resulted after an explosion; Gresford, the reason for the creation of the emotionally charged Miner’s Hymn, Sengherryd in Wales in 1913 when 439 men and boys were also entombed. Closer to home, in 1880 in Seaham, 164 men and boys were killed, some of the bodies brought up unrecognisable. In 1822, 36 were killed at Tudhoe, and 74 at Trimdon followed three years later by the deaths of 41 at Usworth and 28 at Elemore. More recently, Easington’s massive explosion on 29 May 1951, resulted in the deaths of 81 underground workers and two rescuers. Funerals heard the colliery bands playing ‘Gresford.’ Remember these who died and the many others whilst fighting for coal whilst looking at the banners.
Commemorating the Miners’ Strike
The exhibition of these forty banners is an exhibition to commemorate the Miners’ Strike. Although the strike was against the closure of coal mines with no alternative employment offered to replace jobs, it was much more than this. It was not just a fight for jobs, it was a fight for the retention of communities that had rapidly grown around the heart of a village.
Why Durham Cathedral for this exhibition? On Gala Day a service takes place to bless the banner. In some ways this could be likened to ‘Trooping the Colour.’ A representative banner is proudly escorted down the aisle of the packed cathedral where a service occurs and a sermon usually given by the Bishop. Bishop Jenkins supported the miners in their struggles. He said that the “miners should not be defeated”, but they were. He also said that the government at the time was oblivious to “poverty and powerlessness”. The result of that can be seen today. Admire these wonderful banners but see behind the beauty and recognise what they stood for and what has been lost.
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