THE 130th Big Meeting taking place in Durham today holds a special significance.

It is 30 years since the great miners’ strike of 1984-5, the defeat of which plunged Britain into a long Thatcherite night of neoliberal economic madness, spiralling inequality and industrial decline.

Thatcher’s government and its successors removed regulation of the City of London in the so-called Big Bang, directly causing the reckless speculation that prompted the financial crash of 2008 — which in turn inspired the new class war on Britain’s working people we now know as the era of “austerity.”

Slandered by Thatcher as “the enemy within,” the striking miners showed more courage and patriotism than the Tory Party ever has.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) came close to breaking the Conservative government. Its tragic failure to do so is behind many of the deepest problems Britain faces today — mass unemployment as the new normal, the enormous and unaccountable power of big corporations trumping the democratic voice of working people, underpopulated ghost towns which had been thriving, productive communities.

But through it all, the proud spirit of the miners and their families lived on — and there is no better demonstration of that than the annual Durham Miners’ Gala. 

Last year’s Gala was the biggest in 60 years, with 120,000 people thronging the historic city to celebrate its mining heritage 20 years after the last Durham coalfield pit was closed.

It was a stunning achievement considering the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) had been hit with a £2.2 million bill for court costs following the loss of its legal fight to win compensation for thousands of its members who had developed “miners’ knee” due to years of toiling underground hewing the coal that fuelled Britain’s economy.

As DMA secretary Davey Hopper explains on these pages, Britain’s trade unionists and progressives have responded to the financial challenge that resulted with the same generosity and solidarity our readers show each day in donations to the Morning Star’s Summer of Heroes campaign.

Let’s hope today’s Gala is even bigger than last year’s, cementing Durham’s place as home to the largest labour movement festival in Britain.

Because the Big Meeting is not merely a remembrance of things past, or even simply a great day out.

This week NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen was in Parliament in a last-ditch effort to save Britain’s two remaining deep-pit coalmines.

True to their idol Thatcher, Tory ministers are happy to spend £10 million on shutting down the mines and abandoning those who work them but are refusing to countenance stepping in to help them stay open.

They are driven by the same anti-worker instincts we see in every field of government policy and which provoked Thursday’s massive public-sector strike.

The tens of thousands at Durham today reinforce the strike’s message that Britain’s working class is still here, still strong and still fighting for a better world.

Good riddance, IDS 

NEWS that the loathsome Iain Duncan Smith faces the axe in a Downing Street reshuffle will no doubt be welcome to his many victims.

From the closure of the Remploy factories to the scandal of workfare, from the thousands who died after being declared “fit for work” by dodgy privateer Atos to the odious welfare cap, Duncan Smith has been the face of many of this government’s most pernicious policies. 

But as Disabled People Against Cuts spokeswoman Linda Burnip tells the Star today, his legacy will not die with him. The Tory crusade against social security will continue. Only by booting them out next year can we begin to get Britain back on its feet.