Party News: Durham Miners Gala (2026)

Party News from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party members distributed the 2 texts below at the 2026 Durham Miners’ Gala.

Having a laugh

 

If the tiny minority who claim ownership of the world’s wealth ever stopped to consider their situation, they’d surely wet themselves laughing – because the majority accept their claim, even though it’s the majority who create the wealth in the first place.

And there’s more merriment for the capitalists as most people keep swallowing the line served up by political parties – ‘we promise to make the system work for “hard-working families”‘.

Bullshit of course! The system is and always will be loaded against the majority. It will always keep us on edge, forever worried about making ends meet, about downwards pressure on wages, about losing our job.

Our message: we could all get along fine without capitalists and the SPGB’s aim is to get rid of their stupid system. Please think about joining us. Either that or be one more reason for capitalists to be cheerful.

The next revolution

This Gala celebrates the storied history of working-class resistance against the bosses.

But why do we have bosses?

Because the world’s fabulous wealth is held in private hands.

The rich own the Earth, while the rest of us do all the work.

Do you think the rich are doing a good job looking after the planet?

They’re not, are they?

They would rather see it all burn than give up their wealth.

The next revolution must be to abolish private ownership.

Abolish billionaire elites and their puppet politicians.

Abolish property trading, markets and money.

Abolish poverty, environmental destruction and nationalist wars. And abolish bosses.

We have the technology. We have the wit. We just need the will.

Democratic common ownership. It’s the only future worth celebrating. Join us, and bring it one step closer.

Party News: Durham Miners Gala - Part 1 (2026)

Party News from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘It’s not bloody ‘gah-la’, they call it ‘gay-la’ round here.’

‘No it’s not, it’s ‘gah-la’, I’ve heard people say that.’

‘For cryin’ out loud, it’s both. And it’s your round.’

The important thing you learn from the Durham Miners Gala is that, contrary to dismal impressions, radical left politics in the UK is not dead, but alive and well and willing to celebrate the fact every July. The Gala has been going since 1871, and attracts around 200,000 people, making it the world’s biggest such event, and jamming Durham’s small historic streets with crowds, performers, party-heads and the inevitable brass bands.

The enormous Gala field looked like a rock festival, with marquees, food kiosks, a bar with a very long queue, and a funfair. Pop and folk acoustic bands played on a big sound stage, in between impassioned speeches about union solidarity, including the fact that when the Reform-controlled council defunded Durham Pride, Durham Miners stepped up to support the event, recalling the support given to them by Pride members in 1984.

Our members were everywhere, discussing politics at our marquee stall, or out in the field, or on the way in. We dished out hundreds of leaflets, and distributed a lot of books and pamphlets, though we underestimated how much material we needed, forgetting that last year our stall was cleaned out.

All in all, a terrific event and one worth getting involved in for any member who can make the time to come along. We’ll be doing it again next year, for certain!

PJS

Party News: Durham Miners Gala - Part 2 (2026)

Party News from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

As ever a fabulous day out where there is always a real buzz all day. I would recommend it to anyone. What I find really heartening is the number of people who are willing to come over to our stand (and presumably the other political stands) and have an open and straightforward discussion about politics. There was very little rancour in the discussion. We had the opportunity to discuss our case in a degree of depth with many people ranging from anarcho-syndicalists to some older members of a local boy scout group. Wandering around the Gala field is also very interesting. As usual there are the various leftist groups who all hate capitalism, but not quite as much as they hate each other. The Gala organisers either by luck or judgement managed to place the various Trotskyist splinter groups in a way that meant that the Trots were firewalled from each other, usually by some hardline Stalinists or the Labour Party. What becomes apparent when you talk to them about their politics is that generally speaking they just want to cosplay the 1917 October Revolution and that the differences between each group is that their different leaders fell out with each other because they thought it was their turn to wear the Lenin or Trotsky costume. They really should stop referring to themselves as political parties and call themselves what they are: Historical Re-enactment Societies.

T. K.

Editorial: Burnham’s plan to rearrange the chairs

Editorial from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new Prime Minister seems to have borrowed the argument for his flagship policy from the Welsh and Scots Nationalists. Their mantra is that the problems faced by workers living in their geographical area are due to political decisions being made in London rather than in Cardiff or Edinburgh. Burnham’s variation is that the way to solve the problems that workers in England face is to transfer more decision-making powers from London to regional mayors.

These proposals are based on the assumption that governments are able to control the way the capitalist economy works. All the evidence shows that this is not the case. Governments don’t, and can’t, control how capitalism works. It is, rather, the other way round. The capitalist economy generates economic laws which limit what governments can do in that the only choice they have is between giving priority to profits or provoking an economic slowdown.

If you believe that governments can control the economy you will mistakenly conclude that solving the problems facing workers is a matter of government policy and that the policy pursued by those who decide what governments do is the key factor. But, as in fact governments can’t control the way the economy works — can’t overcome its basic economic law that profits must come first — then who makes or where the decision is made to give priority to profit-making is unimportant. Whether this decision is made in London or Cardiff or Edinburgh or Manchester or Midsomer Norton is not going to make any difference. Capitalism will get its way, and as capitalism is the cause of the problems workers face, wherever they live, those problems will continue.

In any event, most decisions concerning the economy are not made by governments, national or regional, but by private enterprises whose goal is to maximise profits for their owners. None of the conventional parties challenge this. So their policies have to be ‘business friendly’ as it is private enterprises in pursuit of profits that decide what is produced.

Burnham’s claim isn’t even that devolving powers to regional mayors would directly benefit workers. It is only that it would, supposedly, benefit them by promoting ‘growth’ which would provide more jobs and extra tax revenue to improve education, the health services and public amenities (after paying more for ‘defence’). Growth, in the sense of the accumulation out of profits of more capital, is what capitalism is all about but it is not something that a government can make happen. The most that a government can do is to maintain or create favourable conditions for profit-making for whenever those in charge of private enterprises see a prospect of making a profit.

It’s not who makes decisions or where they make them but what they decide that is important, and what they decide is imposed by the economic laws of capitalism. We confidently predict that Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’ won’t work, either to bring about capitalist growth or to solve workers’ problems. It’s no more than rearranging the chairs.