FORMER pit communities across the North-East are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike – with a weekend of activities focused on an east Durham town that became a flashpoint during the dispute.

Hundreds are converging on the Easington Social Welfare Centre in Easington Colliery, near Peterlee, tonight (Friday, March 7) for a live showing of The Miner’s Hymns, which pays homage to the region’s mining heritage in music and film. The event is already sold out.

Activities, supported by Beamish Museum, will continue throughout Saturday at the centre.

The dispute, one of the longest and bitterest strikes in modern British history, began on March 5, 1984, when miners at Cortonwood, South Yorkshire, voted to walk out over a decision to close their pit.

Within a week, most of Britain's 200,000 miners were on strike, including 23,000 in the Northumberland and Durham coalfields, while pits in Nottinghamshire continued working in the face of violent picketline scenes.

Over the next 12 months, families and communities were torn apart by the dispute.

At Easington more than 1,800 members of the NUM decided to stand up and fight for the future of their colliery and became the first pit in the Durham coalfield to join the strike on March 12.

Welfare centre manager Ian Foster, an organiser of the weekend’s activities, said: “I’ll never forget what I went through during the strike.

“I became a miner at the age of 16 and my dad and grandfather were also miners. It was our lives.

“This is why during the strike the solidarity of the community of Easington Collliery was rock solid.”

On May 7 1993, Easington was the last pit in the Durham coalfield to close.

The irony was that in the two months before it shut, it had made a £3m profit and had millions of tonnes of coal in its seams.

Mr Foster said: “The closure tore the heart out of the community. It never recovered. A few were trained up and re-employed, but for most of those who were made redundant mining was all they knew.”

From 11am to 4pm tomorrow (Saturday) activities at Easington Social Welfare Centre will include performances by local groups and musicians in addition to displays of work created by Easington residents - inspired by The Miners’ Hymns - and the story of Easington Colliery.

A selection of east Durham mining banners will be shown inside the hall, alongside objects from the 1984-85 Strike and an exhibition which marks the 30th anniversary of the dispute. Entry is free.

The Miners' Hymns is a film by Bill Morrison with music by Johann Johannsson and produced by Forma.