ALTHOUGH the last coalmine in the Durham area closed in 1994, the Durham Miners’ Association and the spirit of the coalfield communities live on — not least through the Durham Miners’ Gala which takes place every year on the second Saturday in July.

The 2015 Gala attracted an estimated 130,000 people, making it the biggest annual event of Britain’s labour and trade union movement.

In former mining communities across the region the spirit of the union and the pits is maintained by union lodge banners, which appear at the Gala every year.

Banner support groups have been established in more than 50 communities, taking responsibility for their local banner’s care and upkeep.

Where banners have been lost or destroyed, replicas are being created.

The historic miners’ headquarters, Redhills, also plays a day-to-day role in the struggles of ordinary working people in the face of today’s savage attacks by the Tories and their allies in big business.

Britain’s biggest union, Unite, has formed Unite Community — a section of the union for people not in a usual workplace, including students, pensioners and unemployed workers.

In Durham Unite Community has joined forces with Durham Miners’ Association, which has provided Unite with office space and facilities at Redhills.

A similar arrangement has been made with Unite Community in South Yorkshire, where a community centre and base for political activism has been established by Unite at the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers in Barnsley.

Redhills’s centenary celebrations began yesterday (Friday) and continue today.

Yesterday’s events included an open day and guided tour of the headquarters.

Today a brass band and choirs feature in a programme of celebrations starting at 12pm and continuing until 5pm.

• THE Durham miners played a special role in WWII.

Apart from producing coal vital to maintaining the war against fascism, the Durham Miners’ Association raised £163,611 for different aspects of the war effort — the equivalent to £6.87 million today.

This included £41,507 for the Red Cross, £27,627 to help Russia, £10,000 to build to two Spitfires for the Royal Air Force and £3,000 to provide six ambulances for the Anglo-French Ambulance Corps.

The association also organised a county-wide campaign in aid of a Lancashire miners’ appeal to rebuild the Czechoslovakian village of Lidice, where the male population was slaughtered in reprisal for the assassination of SS boss Reinhard Heydrich. The village was razed to the ground and its surviving women and children sent to concentration camps.