Why not come on down?

iScot’s DAVE BOWMAN looks ahead to next month’s 133rd Durham Miners’ Gala - or the Big Meeting as it’s called in north east England - and says Europe’s biggest annual community and trade union gathering is one of Britain’s best days out. And there won’t be a Union Jack in sight!

Gala’s pride and passion will attract around

150,000

by Dave Bowman

The 1948 Durham Gala, attended by an estimated half a million people

FOR an event that almost died on its feet in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s following the decimation of the mining industry by Margaret Thatcher’s industrial vandals, the annual Durham Miners’ Gala is in rude health.

So much so that the organisers, the Durham Miners’ Association, are confidently predicting a turn-out in excess of around 150,000 men, women and children for the 2017 Big Meeting on Saturday July 8th and - as per recent Galas - Scots folk will be there in big numbers.