The Big Meeting

Those familiar with Bill Morrison's The Miners' Hymns (2010) will recall the climactic montage celebrating the Durham Miners' Gala. In following up Dennis Skinner: Nature of the Beast (2017), director Daniel Draper marks the 150th anniversary of the Durham Miners' Association, whose annual jamboree was designed to bring the men who toiled underground on to the streets in a show of communal strength. How times have changed since John Irvin used three crews to make the 1963 short, Gala Day. Here, Draper had 15 cameras milling with the crowds to record events on 14 July 2018, as Jeremy Corbyn basked in the adulation of 200,000 supporters continuing a tradition they refused to let die after the county's last working colliery closed in 1994. Making solid use of archive material and talking heads, Draper recalls the proud history of the gala and the way of life it celebrated. But he also provides a compelling behind-the-scenes insight into the organisation of the march and the roles played in it by art, music, politics and working-class solidarity.