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Dave Hopper: A credit to the labour movement

JEREMY CORBYN pays tribute to the legendary former leader of the Durham Miners’ Association

YESTERDAY the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival, the biggest for years, met as ever in the beautiful Dorset countryside, to enjoy each other’s company, music, song and discourse.

I asked the crowd to remember Dave Hopper, the secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, who sadly died on Saturday afternoon.

I asked them to remember Dave, who stood for the miners’ union all his life, and notably during the brutality of the 1984-5 strikes. As the pits closed all across Durham and north-east England, Dave worked to strengthen the annual Miners’ Gala.

The crowd at Tolpuddle fully understood the crucial role that Dave played in his union and in his community.

He told me last week that the pits were gone but the strength and resolve of the mining communities live on in every other campaign and struggle.

The 150,000 present in Durham made this year’s Gala the biggest ever, and that is a credit to Dave and his memory.

What he showed us was that such vile economic ideas, when inflicted on our communities, actually in the end make us stronger, not weaker.

It was my privilege to know Dave for nearly 40 years as an active member of the Labour Party, a stalwart of every progressive policy and a supporter of the miners’ union and the rights of mining communities so abominably forgotten by Tory governments.

In sending our condolences to his family, and his widow, the wonderful Maria from Cuba, we mourn his loss but resolve to continue to make the Durham Miners’ Gala even bigger.

New struggles continue to exist against zero-hours contracts, insecure employment, poor-quality and insecure housing and terrible levels of debt for young people who have gone to college or university.

Dave and the Durham Miners’ Association worked hard on behalf of the the needs of miners who suffered life-changing injuries or poor conditions, campaigning for justice for them.

It’s impossible to think of Dave Hopper without also thinking of the late David Guy, one-time president of the Durham Miners’ Association who we also lost in recent years.

Our movement is built by such active and devoted comrades. Dave Hopper and others worked through storms of criticism and abuse, as the whole mining community did, and came out stronger, more resolute, and ultimately more successful.

Let us not forget them, and their invaluable work.

  • Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party and MP for Islington North.

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