The Durham Miners’ Association has doubled down on its refusal to invite Reform UK to its 139th annual gala despite the party’s landslide victory in the county’s council election.
Last month, the DMA’s general secretary Alan Mardghum vowed that leader Nigel Farage would “never, ever, ever be invited” to the gala – and now, the group has issued a lengthy statement attacking Reform again.
The DMA claimed Reform had won its landslide council victory thanks to “protest votes and a very low turnout”.
It also lashed out at how the party’s councillors – 65 from 98 in total – “do not believe” in community, in the labour movement and in social justice.
The DMA claimed Reform had won its landslide council victory thanks to ‘protest votes and a very low turnout’
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The Durham Miners’ Association has refused to invite leading Reform UK figures including Nigel Farage to their galaDURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION
Durham County Council’s deputy leader, former Saturday Five star Darren Grimes, issued a furious verdict on the DMA’s “snub” in response.
“Right, so the Durham Miners’ Association won’t let Reform UK councillors come to their little jamboree. Boo bloody hoo,” Grimes told GB News.
“This is the same organisation that’s just watched their beloved Labour Party lose 94 per cent of council seats. That’s not an electoral defeat, that’s a restraining order from the entire county.
“They’re very upset about the 34.8 per cent turnout that delivered this humiliation. ‘Very low’, they sniff. Except it wasn’t. It was above average. Turns out that when you give working people something to actually vote FOR – rather than another five years of managed decline and diversity coordinators – they drag themselves to the polling station.
“Here’s what really sticks in their craw: Reform’s 65 councillors are more working-class than Labour’s MPs. Poll them. Go on. You’ll find pit villages and colliery rows in Reform’s family trees. You’ll find Oxbridge and organic delis in Labour’s.
“The DMA lectures about ‘community’ while creating enemies lists like some demented students’ union. They champion ‘workers’ while defending Labour’s £5billion employment bill that’ll make it illegal to have a proper conversation in a pub. They claim to represent Durham whilst their party pursues policies that would turn the North East into Europe’s largest industrial heritage site.
“They accuse Reform of abandoning industrial communities while Reform advocates nationalising British Steel. Labour wouldn’t nationalise a paper clip if it meant upsetting their globalist chums on boards of organisations with an acronym.
“The Durham Miners’ Gala has become what it was always destined to become: a historical re-enactment society for people who think the problem with modern Britain is that we don’t have enough net zero officers.
“Meanwhile, actual Durham voters – the ones whose grandfathers really did go down the pit – have delivered their verdict. The red flag may still fly at the gala… It’s been rightly vaporised at the ballot box.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was branded ‘an enemy of the National Health Service’
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The DMA claimed Grimes’s supporters’ group on Facebook was “an open sewer of racism” – and labelled Reform’s councillors “divisive, hate-filled people [who] have benefitted from the collapse of the Tory Party, and from the Labour Party’s failure to defend basic labour principles on welfare benefits, jobs and social justice”.
“In fact, the Labour Government has swung sharply to the right, and embraced Reform UK’s rhetoric that blames social crisis and hardship not on Tory misrule, tax breaks for the rich and austerity policies, but on immigration,” the association added.
“We in the DMA will not be going down that road. We have not and will not abandon our principles.
“And so Reform UK councillors will not be invited as our guests to the Gala,” its statement finishes – after starting with the words “everyone in Durham is welcome at the Gala”.
A Reform UK spokesman said:”The leadership of the Durham Miners’ Association are political dinosaurs and completely out of touch with their members and the people of County Durham.
“Durham voters gave Reform UK an overwhelming majority on the council on May 1st. The DMA clearly holds the thousands of former miners and their families who voted for Reform in complete disdain.”
