shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2019-07-16 09:58 pm
shewhomust) wrote2019-07-16 09:58 pm
Entry tags:
Big Meeting; Big Lunch
Durham Miners' Gala 2005: my first, and probably most detailed, post on this subject.
Tagged posts (a work in progress)
It's been a Big Weekend: the Miners' Gala, also known as the Big Meeting, on Saturday, followed by Sunday's Big Lunch, organised by neighbours one street over, and attended by people from our very local neighbourhood. I was surprised, on Sunday, at the extent to which people - whom I didn't know well, and with whom I thought I was making small talk - regarded the Gala as 'not for us', even 'to be avoided at all costs'. Even in years when political differences can be a bit prickly, I'd hate to miss the brass bands and the banners:
It's an opportunity to show off my deficiencies as a street photographer: this should have been a perfect juxtaposition of the portrait of Ellen Wilkinson with the baby in the pushchair (matching shades of blue courtesy of education union NAS/UWT): The past we inherit, the future we build. Instead two additional heads intrude into the composition - children, admittedly, and therefore on-theme, but not part of my plan. Still, the dominance of royal blue, not to mention the noise of folded paper clappers (and a few plastic ones left over from previous years, before plastic was widely seen as Evil) told us we were nearing NAS/UWT Central, and we caught up withsamarcand and family for the briefest of hugs and greetings...
One reason I'm bad at street photography is that I am very self-conscious about photographing people I don't know - and people I do, for that matter. But every now and then, someone is so obviously posing for the camera that it seems churlish not to. What caught my eye here was the vivid clothing contrasting with the muted tones of the banner (the Campaign to Protect the Pont Valley - protect it, that is, from opencast coal mining, which must say something about the inclusiveness of the Gala): but someone walked into shot and had to be cropped out, so you see less of the banner than you might. Maybe later...
I took advantage of the band's own photocall to sneak this shot; love the contrast of the formal band uniforms and the floral-wreath-and-glitter adornments.
We must be getting old, because we didn't try to fight our way through the crowds on the corner of Elvet (which is where you can see the speakers on the County Hotel balcony, and hear the bands playing for them). Instead we went round the back of the hotel, where we ran into a couple of members of the mayor's bodyguard, in their heavy black robes, and conversed about the sins of the County Council, which was unexpected. Then we meandered down to the Racecourse, with our usual pause on the green in Old Elvet to watch the bands and the banners go past; and by the time we arrived, it was setting in to rain. So we didn't linger.
A quick tour of the tents (where I saw both 'No to Racism - No to Islamophobia - No to Antisemitism' and, a few tables away, 'Stop the Witch hunt - support Chris Williamson'). We paused long enough to hear the first speaker (I don't know who it was) arguing that if we have problems within the party, we should resolve them within the party, we don't take them to the hostile media (yes, but what if our problem is precisely with the party's system for resolving disputes?), and then stopped to listen to Shami Chakrabarti, who had evidently decided to accentuate the positive and not mention the current unpleasantness. Which is her prerogative, but I would have loved to hear what she thought of the problem (no, I can see that that was never going to happen). By now it was cold and grey, still raining steadily. We were wet and we were ready for lunch - and we weren't the only ones:
There's the Pont Valley banner again, sighted just as we left the Racecourse. We had lunch at the burrito bar on Elvet Bridge: cheerful and friendly, warming and spicy, and entirely unlike the Café Continental which used to occupy that site, and was while it lasted our go-to location for a post-Gala lunch. All the upstairs tables we taken, so we didn't get our bird's eye view of the bands heading home from the Racecourse.
That was it, really. Here's the best report I could find of Jeremy Corbyn's speech. Looking for that, I also found this, which really isn't helpful.
Tagged posts (a work in progress)
It's been a Big Weekend: the Miners' Gala, also known as the Big Meeting, on Saturday, followed by Sunday's Big Lunch, organised by neighbours one street over, and attended by people from our very local neighbourhood. I was surprised, on Sunday, at the extent to which people - whom I didn't know well, and with whom I thought I was making small talk - regarded the Gala as 'not for us', even 'to be avoided at all costs'. Even in years when political differences can be a bit prickly, I'd hate to miss the brass bands and the banners:
It's an opportunity to show off my deficiencies as a street photographer: this should have been a perfect juxtaposition of the portrait of Ellen Wilkinson with the baby in the pushchair (matching shades of blue courtesy of education union NAS/UWT): The past we inherit, the future we build. Instead two additional heads intrude into the composition - children, admittedly, and therefore on-theme, but not part of my plan. Still, the dominance of royal blue, not to mention the noise of folded paper clappers (and a few plastic ones left over from previous years, before plastic was widely seen as Evil) told us we were nearing NAS/UWT Central, and we caught up with
samarcand and family for the briefest of hugs and greetings...One reason I'm bad at street photography is that I am very self-conscious about photographing people I don't know - and people I do, for that matter. But every now and then, someone is so obviously posing for the camera that it seems churlish not to. What caught my eye here was the vivid clothing contrasting with the muted tones of the banner (the Campaign to Protect the Pont Valley - protect it, that is, from opencast coal mining, which must say something about the inclusiveness of the Gala): but someone walked into shot and had to be cropped out, so you see less of the banner than you might. Maybe later...
I took advantage of the band's own photocall to sneak this shot; love the contrast of the formal band uniforms and the floral-wreath-and-glitter adornments.
We must be getting old, because we didn't try to fight our way through the crowds on the corner of Elvet (which is where you can see the speakers on the County Hotel balcony, and hear the bands playing for them). Instead we went round the back of the hotel, where we ran into a couple of members of the mayor's bodyguard, in their heavy black robes, and conversed about the sins of the County Council, which was unexpected. Then we meandered down to the Racecourse, with our usual pause on the green in Old Elvet to watch the bands and the banners go past; and by the time we arrived, it was setting in to rain. So we didn't linger.
A quick tour of the tents (where I saw both 'No to Racism - No to Islamophobia - No to Antisemitism' and, a few tables away, 'Stop the Witch hunt - support Chris Williamson'). We paused long enough to hear the first speaker (I don't know who it was) arguing that if we have problems within the party, we should resolve them within the party, we don't take them to the hostile media (yes, but what if our problem is precisely with the party's system for resolving disputes?), and then stopped to listen to Shami Chakrabarti, who had evidently decided to accentuate the positive and not mention the current unpleasantness. Which is her prerogative, but I would have loved to hear what she thought of the problem (no, I can see that that was never going to happen). By now it was cold and grey, still raining steadily. We were wet and we were ready for lunch - and we weren't the only ones:
There's the Pont Valley banner again, sighted just as we left the Racecourse. We had lunch at the burrito bar on Elvet Bridge: cheerful and friendly, warming and spicy, and entirely unlike the Café Continental which used to occupy that site, and was while it lasted our go-to location for a post-Gala lunch. All the upstairs tables we taken, so we didn't get our bird's eye view of the bands heading home from the Racecourse.
That was it, really. Here's the best report I could find of Jeremy Corbyn's speech. Looking for that, I also found this, which really isn't helpful.
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