OVER the last several years, I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Durham Miners’ Gala four times, the largest and one of the oldest events celebrating working-class culture and communities in Europe.

I don’t think this makes me an expert on the matter by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough about the mining industry and growing up in a working class, deindustrialised community to know that coarsely reducing it to a glorification of the mining industry or indeed, a Corbyn rally, as some liberal commentators would have you believe, is a gross injustice to the working-class communities who keep this event going year after year.

Having grown up in Paisley, a large former textile town on the outskirts of Glasgow, I have seen and continue to experience the impact of communities left behind by the rapid expansion of the banking and service based economy. The weekend before Durham Miners’ Gala, on the first Saturday in July, the people of Paisley take to the streets to watch a celebration of the cultural legacy of its former textile industry. Sma Shot day is a celebration of the textile workers’ victory over their bosses in the 19th century and the proud radical tradition of fighting for better rights and conditions at work.