Dean Young, Liverpool and District Socialist Party
The Durham Miners’ Gala is one of Britain’s proudest trade unionist traditions, and as someone attending for the first time it was striking. Socialist Party members mobilised from across the country to discuss with the workers and young people attending.
I met several storied figures from the labour movement, including someone was the very last one up from his pit in a small village in south Wales, and don’t worry we sold him a paper! Our mobilisation and interaction with workers bore fruits, selling hundreds copies of the Socialist, raising hundreds of pounds for the fighting fund and literature selling like hotcakes.
Young Socialist Party members spent the day talking to people about a socialist alternative to the broken capitalist system (See page 16). The public meet-up provided me with hope seeing people of various generations interact and discuss the potential for working-class struggle and the growth of socialist ideas.
The speeches were scathing of the Tories, but also of the meekness of Starmer. What was missing was the conclusion of the need for a new mass workers’ party, which Socialist Party members are fighting for.
