Jessica O'ConnorDurham Pride, the Durham Miners Association, and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have condemned Durham County Council’s decision to withdraw funding for the city’s annual Pride celebration.
The council said financial pressures and what it described as a “specific and contested political ideology” were behind the decision to axe support.
Durham Pride attracts thousands of visitors from across the UK each year, boosting tourism and the local economy, as well as acting as a celebration for the LGBT+ community.
In response to the funding cut, organisers have announced a major fundraising drive beginning at Redhills, Durham Miners’ Hall, on the 5th of September.
The launch event will feature a screening of the award-winning film Pride and a panel discussion with miners’ representatives, politicians, and special guest Mike Jackson, one of the founders of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.
Mel Metcalf, chair of 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.”
Dave Pike, regional secretary for the TUC North East, Yorkshire & Humber, added: “Pride is an important celebration for LGBT+ people, a chance to look back at the gains that have been made. For the council to withdraw their support shows the lack of care they have for the people of Durham.
“A strong and visible pride matters, it matters for the thousands of LGBT+ people who experience hate crimes each year, it matters to the young kid deciding if it is safe to come out, and it matters to those vulnerable LGBT+ people who are four times more likely to attempt suicide.”
Stephen Guy, chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, linked the situation to historic solidarity between miners and LGBT+ activists.
He said: “Pride events, since the first march in 1970, have had at their core protests to secure rights. The similarities of the challenges faced by the LGBT+ communities and the mining communities over the years are quite remarkable.
“The time has come for the Durham Miners Association, the NUM, and others in the trade union movement to ramp up support for Durham Pride, which has been a target for closure since the Reform was elected in County Durham.”
Cllr Darren Grimes, Durham County Councillor, said: “Durham Pride won’t be getting a single penny from this council next year. If Labour or the Lib Dems want to raid their members’ budgets to fund political street theatre, that’s on them — Reform will spend ours on the services everyone relies on, not on flying the latest alphabet flag for the professional offence industry.
“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.”
