Unions to help fund Durham Pride after Reform UK pulls cash

Darren Grimes, Durham County Council’s deputy leader, criticised the annual celebration and said the local authority will divert funding to key services instead. 

“Durham Pride won’t be getting a single penny from this council next year,” he said last week. 

Thousands of people attended this year’s event on May 24-25, with up to £10,000 invested by the council as part of work to support the wider cultural offer in the region following its unsuccessful City of Culture bid. 

The North East Trade Union Congress (TUC) said it would ‘co-ordinate’ a group to support the event and announced a fundraiser, with a screening of the film ‘Pride’, in September and a discussion with one of the founders of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

Dave Pike, regional secretary for the TUC North East, Yorkshire & Humber, said: “While the Reform party is promoting division, I am proud to stand alongside the LGBT-plus community in Durham, and the Miners Association, for unity and for a society that respects people regardless of our differences.”

Chair of the Durham Miners’ Gala organiser, the Durham Miners’ Association, Stephen Guy, told the Echo: “We will give Pride an absolute commitment.

DMA chair Stephen Guy. (Image: Stuart Boulton) “Our relationship with the lesbian and gay community goes back to 1984 when they supported the miners during the strike. We will reciprocate that support.”

‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ helped striking mineworkers, and are the subject of 2014 film ‘Pride’.

But criticising the event’s agenda, Cllr Grimes added: “Pride stopped being a celebration of gay rights a long time ago. It’s morphed into a travelling billboard for gender ideology and political activism that many in the gay community — myself included — want no part of. Taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling it.

“The event can and will go ahead safely, but Durham County Council isn’t an ATM for contested causes. Our residents deserve bins emptied, roads fixed, and services funded — not more council-sponsored politics in fancy dress.”

Mel Metcalf from Durham Pride, said: “The film is about standing united in the face of prejudice – capturing what many thought was Thatcher’s assault on mining communities to the injustice of Section 28.

“Today, as a new and growing prejudice threatens our trans siblings, it is again the Durham Miners and the trade union movement that stands with us.

Recommended reading

“The film captures 1980s Britain perfectly, and we are honoured to have Mike Jackson with us to discuss the film and his experiences during the strike and its impact, decades later.”

Reform took control of Durham County Council in a sweeping election victory in May.

Reform leaders sparked a backlash in May after taking down an LGBT+ Pride flag at Durham County Hall shortly after taking control of the local authority.