BANNERS for the Deaf Hill and Wheatley Hill collieries were blessed at the traditional Miners’ Festival Service at Durham Cathedral on Saturday.

The banners were marched in alongside the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) banner, accompanied by the DMA pit band, the North Lakes band and the GT Group Peterlee Town band, the huge church echoing with the thunder of their drums.

The banners were dedicated by Acting Bishop of Durham and Bishop of Jarrow the Right Reverend Sarah Clark, who asked that they inspire us to “lives of discipleship and service.”

The bishop later spoke of her own mining heritage, as a “daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter of Welsh miners.”

The address was given by teachers’ union NASUWT regional organiser Simon Kennedy, who called on the new Labour government to begin a healing process for the victims of Thatcher’s assault on the miners 40 years ago, when “the truncheon and the policeman’s boot” inflicted deep wounds across the pit villages of County Durham, including through the promised inquiry into events at Orgreave and a pardon for those convicted of offences during the strike.