THIS magnificent miners' banner dating from the 1890's and still regularly on display at Beamish Museum, County Durham, is living proof that Robert Burns' values of egalitarianism and radicalism were appreciated outside his native Scotland - even in the days before the internet turned the Bard into a worldwide icon.
The Lambton lodge banner - made in the North East of England by SM Peacock of South Shields and featuring the 1787 Alexander Nasmyth portrait of Burns and an image of his Alloway birthplace - is one of three Durham miners' banners of the time to honour the "ploughman poet". However only the giant 10ft x 9ft one (above) is still in existence.
Coincidentally another Scot - miners' leader Alexander MacDonald, who was a speaker at the first Durham Miners' Gala in 1871 - also features on the "Burns banner". After starting work down a Scottish pit at the age of eight he later went to Glasgow University in his mid-twenties and eventually became leader of the National Miners' Association, a loose association of county unions that preceded a national union.
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A Wingate lodge banner from the same era featured small images of Burns and England's William Shakespeare. However, decades later, the eminent County Durham mining historian and writer William Moyes commented: "While it is not difficult to justify the presence of a radical thinker on the banner, the appearance of the pro-Establishment playwright is somewhat puzzling." Scotland 1, England 0!
Meanwhile an early banner commissioned by miners at Etherley Colliery, south-west Durham, featured an approximate quotation from Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night:
Princes and Lords are but the breath of kings
But man is the noblest work of God
The trend of honouring literary figures on Durham miners' banners declined in the early 20th century when the rise of the Labour Party offered new heroes with another Scot, Keir Hardie, among the most featured political figures.
The 150th anniversary Durham Gala - or The Big Meeting as it is known as in North East England - is scheduled for July 10. And - if it goes ahead (a big if in the current circumstances) it will be loud, proud, spectacular, and justify the organisers' claim that it is Europe's biggest trade union and community gathering.
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In recent years there have been significant numbers travelling from Scotland for the day including contingents from Unite Scotland, the Fife People's Assembly, the Scottish division of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, WASPI women from Ayrshire & Arran and Langholm Town Band.
Sadly though, even if the Gala goes ahead, it's unlikely that the Burns banner will be paraded. It's just too valuable and important to be risked in an environment where, even in an English summer, a sudden gust of wind could demolish 130 years of working class history ... and a unique tribute to the world's most famous Scot.
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