AbstractThe Durham Miners Gala has taken place annually for over a hundred years. In its heyday it was an immensely popular occasion. In the post‐war period it became an established part of the British Labour calendar, being attended regularly by Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and foreign ambassadors. The Gala can be understood as a ceremony which links twentieth century class politics with the more spontaneous and religious forms of political activity in the nineteenth century. This historical continuity is rooted in the culture of mining and mining villages, developed by the social isolation of miners and their particular legal status and adapted periodically by the formal structures of the mining unio