The Durham Miners’ Gala has become a woke farce

You shouldn’t need physical courage to remind the comrades of today’s Labour movement that women have rights. But in 2025, it seems that stating the obvious can get you assaulted, heckled and even left in need of police protection. This was the experience of over 30 women from grassroots feminist groups at the Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday. And all because they joined the 200,000-strong crowd with a message the modern left would rather not hear. That message was, as one banner put it: ‘Women are born, not worn.’

To the beard-stroking union bosses and their student activist hangers-on, this message and the women who shared it were about as welcome as a Pride parade in Gaza. Just how unwelcome was soon made clear: one woman was allegedly headbutted by a trans activist, while others were shoved and jeered until police were forced to intervene. Solidarity, it seems, only applies to those who toe the ideological line.

Rose Reeve, from the Northern RadFem Network, explained why she showed up despite the risks:

‘Women should be as much a part of [the labour movement] as everyone else. But the unions have let women down big time. They’ve failed to support their female members who’ve been victimised, harassed and disciplined – in some cases, even losing their jobs – simply for stating that men can’t change sex.’

Midway through the march, the women stopped beneath the Durham County Hotel, where former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn stood on the balcony, like some progressive pope blessing his flock.

Leigh Taylor, from the Women’s Rights Network North Yorkshire and Tees Valley, told me that she shouted to him: ‘Do you support women’s right to single-sex spaces?’ Corbyn looked up. He seemed to have heard what she said. And yet he turned away, offering no response. Standing beside him was Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot – proof that, for the hard left, it’s easier to hold a position on Middle Eastern politics than to acknowledge women’s rights are being undermined by trans ideology here in Britain.

But not everyone turned away. Some cheered, nodded or quietly mouthed their thanks. Before the march even began, a woman ran up, hugged one of the protesters and said: ‘Thank you for what you’re doing.’ Another recalled a father pointing them out to his daughter and saying: ‘These women are fighting to protect your rights.’ During the procession, a woman in her eighties joined them, telling them bitterly that her mother would have been horrified to see women having to fight for their rights all over again.

You would expect a woman being attacked in the street for defending sex-based rights might warrant a headline or two. But no. Instead, the BBC gushed over the ‘fabulous’ inclusion of a Pride group at the gala. Labour MP Kate Osborne took the opportunity to make the dubious claim that there had always been a ‘close association between the miners and the LGBT community’.

Yes, it’s true that, during the Miners’ Strike in the mid-1980s, a brief alliance formed between lesbian and gay activists and striking miners. But trans rights, as they’re understood today, simply weren’t being fought for back then. Les Dawson in a wig was about as close as most people got to what now gets branded ‘trans’.

Hacking coal out of a seam is tough physical work. Of course, women can do it, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of manual labour understands that male strength is a serious advantage. The luxury belief that feelings of gender identity trump the reality of sex wouldn’t have made any sense in the context of hard labour. Indeed, it only makes sense to the laptop class. Unsurprisingly, the belief has spread in the UK since heavy industry has declined.

Perhaps the left’s abandonment of half the population ought not to be surprising. The labour movement has a long, ignominious habit of treating women’s rights as an optional extra – something to be dealt with after the revolution, once the lads have solved everything else.

Unions couldn’t stop the collapse of British industry or the march of globalisation, and they won’t stop jobs being lost to AI in future. But they could still protect people. They could defend the material rights of women – if they weren’t too busy waving flags for every cause except that of those who give birth to the entire workforce.

The Durham Miners’ Gala served at least one useful purpose. It reminded us that union leaders are nostalgic for the past, deluded about the future and utterly blind to the present. The truth is simple: the left has ditched women in favour of an elite ideology. But judging by the cheers, the hugs and the grassroots support for those feminists on the streets of Durham, the public has not.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.