ALAN MARDGHUM expects another bumper crowd for the Durham Miners’ Gala this year — despite some run-ins with Reform councillors miffed to be left off the platform.

The whinging was led by Durham County Council deputy leader Darren Grimes, who provoked a flurry of news stories with claims members of his party wouldn’t be welcome at the Big Meeting.

“It’s a total lie,” the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) general secretary tells me. “We’re not banning anybody. We welcome everyone to the Gala.

“All we’ve said is that people who do not share our values — community, labour movement, social justice values — will not be invited onto the platform, or the balcony” (of the County Hotel, past which the pit bands march).

“When we invite official guests as speakers, they’re people we have something in common with as trade unionists.

“Not everyone will agree with everything said from the platform, but any right-minded person would agree that they are messages of unity, about respect for our fellow human beings wherever in the world they may be.

“We’ve got a long history at the DMA of inviting people from around the world, we’ve had people from every continent speaking at the Gala as our guests. We believe in international solidarity.”

That’s prompted the invitation to Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain, to address this year’s crowds as Israel continues its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip with backing from the British state.

Mardghum believes it’s especially important to give Palestinian voices a platform following Establishment uproar at pro-Palestine chants at Glastonbury, and the recent ban on Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group after some of its activists poured paint on RAF planes at the air force’s Brize Norton base.

“The security forces need to be questioned seriously about that,” he feels. “How did they get in? Imagine if they’d been proper terrorists! They could have put bombs under those planes, blown them up.

“So there ought to be an investigation into how people got into a military base, but what did they do there? They sprayed some red paint representing blood on the planes.

“That’s not terrorism. It’s like saying the artists spraying graffiti on town walls are terrorists.

“And the people proscribing that organisation aren’t saying a dicky bird about what the [Israel Defence Forces] are doing — luring people in for food and water and shooting them indiscriminately. That’s murder.”

Eyes at the Gala will also be on Jeremy Corbyn, another guest speaker this year, given current excitement over a potential new party of the left. There was a time when Labour leaders were a regular presence at the Big Meeting — a tradition Corbyn revived when leading the party. But Mardghum doesn’t pull his punches when assessing the record of current Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or apologise for promoting his expelled predecessor as a truer friend of the labour movement.

A year into the Labour government, Mardghum sums up his attitude in a word: “Disgust.

“They have done some good things, but those have been overshadowed by the way they have attacked the most vulnerable in society.” He blames Starmer’s right-wing strategist Morgan McSweeney — “you’d almost think he’s a plant to have done so much damage to a government elected a year ago in a landslide victory.”

Labour’s attacks on its own included the raid on pensioners’ winter fuel payments, the betrayal of the Waspi women (“not one of them on that front bench lost an opportunity [when in opposition] to stand with the Waspi women, get a photoshoot and say, ‘we’ll put this right. And they didn’t,”) and the recent attack on disability benefits, which resulted in a humiliating climbdown on most of the original Bill because of the scale of MPs’ rebellion.

He salutes the MPs who “had the courage and guts to stand up and say, ‘we’re not having this’.” But he slams the compromise, too, since telling future claimants they will get less money than current ones is clearly unfair.

Nor is he convinced Starmer will learn anything from the episode. “They need to get rid of him in my view. If they don’t get rid of Starmer, and these unelected people like McSweeney, they will deliver a trouncing to the Labour Party at the next election.”

As Mardghum has related to the Morning Star before, he’s no longer a Labour member, though he was in the party for 46 years, having left when being asked to explain himself for speaking alongside former North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll.

He had been angry enough that the central party machine had decreed Driscoll, the only elected Labour mayor in north-east England at the time, wasn’t deemed good enough for a short or even long list of candidates for the enlarged North East mayoralty, in a “totally undemocratic” middle finger to local Labour opinion. When they targeted him for continuing to back Driscoll, he thought “good riddance to the Labour Party.”

“I can totally understand the disillusionment with Labour. They do not represent the values that we do, and it’s their actions that enable the growth of Reform.” Reform swept the board at County Durham’s last elections, now dominating the council — historically Labour’s first-ever county council, and one it held for a century, but on which it is now reduced to a paltry four of 98 seats. If Labour doesn’t change, it will see more councils go that way next year, he believes, including that in Sunderland where he lives.

“Relying on big business to bail us out isn’t going to work,” he warns, advising Labour to stop fawning on corporations and mass media outlets that will stab it in the back. People will only stop flocking to Reform if Labour gets serious about delivering high-quality jobs, on secure contracts, with decent pensions at the end and a social safety net to look after you when things go wrong — the welfare state gutted by successive governments, driving anxiety and social tensions.

But if he understands why people are turning against Labour, he stresses that voting for Reform in consequence is a big mistake.

“A government led by Reform is not an idle threat. I hear people praising Reform all the time. But what policies do they have, really?

“Stop the boats? That’s not going to help us. Actually if you had a fair immigration system that might stop the boats. And if you stopped bombing people in these countries and causing famines maybe people wouldn’t need refuge.” The spread of wars across the world, with Britain allied to aggressive leaders from Trump to Netanyahu, concerns him: “It’s like John Lennon said — society is run by insane people, for insane objectives.”

For all their recent success, Mardghum feels Reform are fundamentally alien to the traditions and culture of the working class.

“The Gala, still going strong decades after the last pit closed in the Durham coalfield, is testament to the resilience of our mining communities.

“Because we’ve always promoted a message of hope, of sticking together, that unity is strength.” Reform councillors moaning about not being invited to address the crowds don’t understand that: “It’s not a jamboree, or a historical re-enactment. It’s about the labour movement.”

The newly renovated Redhills — the magnificent “pitmen’s parliament” built for gatherings of every lodge in the Durham coalfield — is an example of how that labour movement continues to invest in the local community, with the DMA having led efforts to raise money, most of it from trade unions, to turn it into a “a hub for the people of Durham.

“For everybody to appreciate the heritage and culture of the Durham miners through a vibrant, living building. Not a museum, but one which gives future generations a centre of our culture, one that has produced singers, songwriters, artists, musicians and will keep doing so.

“I’m massively proud to represent this marvellous organisation, one which has done so much good for the communities of County Durham and elsewhere.”