UNIONS will be urged at today’s Durham Miners’ Gala to ditch Labour and start a new party.

Transport workers leader Bob Crow will tell the 129th Big Meeting that the party unions created no longer represents their interests.

Mr Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, will tell the Gala that a “new party of labour” is needed to challenge “the pro-business, anti-worker agenda" of the three main political parties, including Labour.

Last year, Ed Milliband became the first Labour leader since Neil Kinnock to attend the country’s biggest labour movement event.

His brother David previously turned down a Gala invitation because he would have had to share a platform with “militant’’ Mr Crow.

The breakaway call comes at a time of great friction between Labour and the unions who fund the party.

A police investigation has begun into allegations about the influence exerted by the public service union Unite over the candidate selection by the Falkirk constituency Labour Party.

Unite’s General Secretary, Len McCluskey, is also one of the speakers at the Gala, which will be attended by most of the region’s Labour MPs and possibly party veterans such as Tony Been and Dennis Skinner.

The RMT was disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 2004 when some of its Scottish branches donated money to the Scottish Socialist Party.

Speaking before the Gala, Mr Crow said: “Over the past week we have seen Ed Miliband dancing to the tune of Tony Blair and the rest of the New Labour conspirators as he seeks to hack away at the last remaining shreds of influence held by those who created the party that he leads, the trade unions.

“If others want to stick around and be insulted by those whose only interest is our money and not our ideas then that’s a matter for them.

“For the rest, there is a whole world of opportunity outside the constraints of the Labour Party and RMT would urge them to embrace it and join us in this new political project.”

The Gala will also be addressed by the leader of the TUC, Frances O'Grady, who will defend the role of the unions and claim Parliament needs more MPs with a background as bus drivers, cleaners, teachers or miners.

She will say: "The past few weeks have been a tumultuous time for unions.

"Some members of the Government seem to think attacking democratic unions is clever but they risk alienating millions of ordinary union members in the electorate.

"But while our opponents have been trying to dish the dirt, it's worth remembering that when it comes to the funding of political parties, union political donations are the cleanest in British politics."

*Royle Family and Brookside star Ricky Tomlinson will speak to the Gala about the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign, which aims to overturn the “unjust” convictions of building workers, including the actor and comedian, for picketing offences during the 1972 national building strike.