Campaign news

A big weekend for the labour movement

10th July 2012

This year two of the biggest events in the labour movement calendar coincide at opposite ends of England: the Tolpuddle Festival and the Durham Miners Gala. LRC activists will be present at both, running stalls and handing out campaign literature - as well as at other events on Saturday.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival is a weekend event starting on Friday and continuing into Sunday with labour movement performers, speakers, discussions and stalls – as well as the traditional march – to keep the whole family entertained all weekend. Speakers include Owen Jones, Tony Benn and new TUC general secretary-elect Frances O’Grady. See the full programme.

Dating back to 1871, the Durham Miners Gala is a huge community event attracting around 100,000 activists. Speakers at the event will include Labour leader Ed Miliband, GMB general secretary Paul Kenny and his PCS counterpart Mark Serwotka.

Look out for LRC North East comrades’ stall, and as part of the Durham Miners’ Gala weekend, the People’s Bookshop (Saddler’s Yard, Durham, DH1 3NP) is hosting a film screening of ‘Never done anything like it before’, a documentary celebrating the role of women during the 1984-85 strike. The film will be followed by a talk and discussion with Florence Anderson, Sunderland city councillor and one of the women who led the ‘Women Against the Pit Closures’ in the Durham Coalfield.

Dave Hopper, General Secretary of the Durham Miners Association, and NE region NUM said “We have never had a better opportunity to fight back and establish a society based on the needs of people and not on the profit and greed of the few. Let the Gala be that launchpad.”

But it’s not just in Dorset and Durham that activity will be taking place, Sussex LRC activists in Brighton are busy preparing for the Brighton & Hove People’s Day. “We’ll be part of the Health & Wellbeing Zone and our pitch is outside Chilli Pickle in Jubilee Street.”

“We interpret ‘health & wellbeing’ widely – in our view everything contributes to it. If socialism isn’t about health & wellbeing, what’s it all about?”

In Bristol activists will be out for the city’s pride march on Saturday, but are also having to mobilise for a more sinister reason – against the EDL which has chosen 14 July to march through Bristol. Local group ‘We are Bristol’ said, “There is no place for the EDL here in Bristol’s multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-faith community”. Get involved in the pride march and EDL counter-demo in Bristol.