MAY I begin by saying I am thrilled to once again be at the Durham Miners’ Gala, a highlight of the year that only keeps going from strength to strength. 

Over the years the gala has taken on a powerful role in bringing together our movement to celebrate its proud working-class industrial heritage, reaffirm our spirit of solidarity and camaraderie, and to inspire the next generation to carry on the good fight. 

Watching and absorbing the rituals and traditions of the brass bands, lodge banners, and political speeches serve to remind us that we belong to a movement bigger than ourselves, that we are the torch-bearers of a history of working-class solidarity and resistance in this country and internationally that goes back centuries, in which I am proud to play my part. 

While I look forward to a more relaxing weekend of meeting and catching up with friends new and old, this year’s gala takes place in the midst of a battle against a wave of draconian legislation that seeks to impose restrictions on our fundamental rights to protest, boycott, collectively bargain and vote in free elections. 

The root of this is the Conservative government’s complete lack of ideas and solutions to the multitude of problems facing the country. The fact is that the country is broken. It is literally on its knees.

Wages have shrunk, public services have crumbled, hospital waiting times are through the roof and the buses and trains don’t show up on time — if they indeed show up at all as private greed has smashed our transport system, with record profit siphoned off to countries overseas.

Despite this, the ideological debates within the Conservative Party remain firmly rooted in the 1980s.

Millions of people across the country voted for the Conservatives in 2019 hoping they would stick to their promise of harnessing the power of the state to defend their economic interests against the malign effects of globalisation and an economic orthodoxy that has decimated their industry and communities.

Instead they were offered reheated Thatcherism with more than a hint of right-wing Farageism, and a government more interested in protecting the interests of the ultra-rich few rather than the many. 

Alarmingly, it appears that the vast majority of politicians in Westminster underestimate the challenges facing our country ahead in the 21st century.

A rapidly ageing population, complete lack of industrial strategy, high energy prices and a chronic housing crisis are all issues that do not receive anything like the attention and urgency they deserve.

To divert our attention from their inability to find solutions to our political problems, the Tory Party keeps the culture wars raging, spending more and more time debating the minutiae of controversial issues the vast majority of people in the country remain uninterested in. 

People want to hear solutions that will really benefit their lives. How will the government get inflation down? How will they repair our NHS and public services? What is their strategy for creating high-quality, secure, local jobs that have disappeared from their communities and been left unreplaced? Or how will pay, which has stagnated for over a decade, keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living? 

Instead, the government responds by imposing new oppressive restrictions on trade union activity, curbing the rights of working people to collectively organise against plummeting wages while they stand by and watch shareholders and CEOs get richer and richer.

Or by legislating against the right to peacefully protest against climate change and global warming, the effects of which will devastate working-class communities at home and around the globe — effects that those who are making their fortunes from destroying the environment will remain sheltered from. 

It is no exaggeration to ask how much longer the gala itself, with its long history of political agitation often at odds with powerful economic and political interest in this country, will be permitted under this new legislation which seeks to purge any dissident voices willing to stand up for ordinary people.

Would the speeches at the racecourse, delivered in the past by names such as Keir Hardie, Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan, Ellen Wilkinson, Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Tony Benn and Dennis Skinner among many others, be acceptable under today’s severe anti-protest and anti-trade union laws? We are only left to wonder and perhaps in the near future find out. 

There is only so much more that ordinary people, working hard to put food on the table and keep a roof over their families’ heads, can take.

People are crying out for an alternative government that is brave enough to firmly commit to protecting their civil rights and liberties fundamental to our democracy, and who are willing to stand up for their economic interest rather than protecting a system that only serves to make the rich richer and exacerbate our growing equality gap with disastrous social and political consequences. 

I would also like to once again place on record my unwavering support for the trade union movement who have been a beacon of hope over the past year, leading the fight on behalf of ordinary people who face a government ideologically hostile to workers’ rights and a commitment to keep wages down and working-class people in their place.

I have been on countless picket lines up and down the country speaking to workers passionate about their industry and concerned not only about being able to make ends meet themselves, but about the future of our public services that are being torn apart all together.

The battle will rage on so long as we have a Ukip-lite government in charge, but the movement can count on my unwavering support, as well as the support of millions of workers around the country, for as long as it necessary.

At this moment in time you would be forgiven for thinking the outlook was bleak for our movement and the country’s fortunes more generally. But the fight goes on.

Use this weekend to soak up the atmosphere. Revel in the solidarity that still runs deep through our community and let it be an example of just how powerful we can be when we stand together as one.

Remind yourself of the battles we have both won and lost over the years and how far we have come since the first gala over 150 years ago. And most importantly, remember to enjoy yourself.

Ian Lavery is Labour MP for Wansbeck.