JEREMY CORBYN will summon up the spirit of the Durham Miners’ Gala to show the Labour Party the way ahead in his speech tomorrow.

He will tell the crowd on the Racecourse: “The Durham Miners’ Gala is a chance to celebrate the extraordinary achievements, the strength and solidarity of the mining communities and the miners’ union, which played such a central role in our movement and our country for over a century.

“The spirit of the Gala is the spirit of communities coming together.

 “And communities coming together is the future for our country that Labour stands for.

 “We are determined not only to celebrate the best of the past but to invest, rebuild and re-equip the former mining communities many of which have been neglected and bypassed by failed economic policies with the cutting edge industries and high quality jobs of the 21st Century.”

Speaking to The Northern Echo tonight, Mr Corbyn said he had thought about his Gala speech “a great deal about this because it is a very special occasion”, and said he would pay tribute to the late Davey Hopper and David Guy who had “kept the community together, kept the tradition together”.

He said: “I will thank everyone for their support in the election campaign, point out that we put on three million more votes than last time, which was not quite enough to give us a Labour government, and I’ll be finishing with something unusual – but you’ll have to wait to hear that.”

On his way to Durham, Mr Corbyn visited the British Steel works in Skinningrove, east Cleveland, and watched 1,250 degree, 10 metre long, orange-hot blooms of steel being transformed into parts for earthmovers.

With his party on election footing, his visit was aimed at showing how Labour was committed to supporting a steel industry that has been through tough times on Teesside

The Skinningrove works, which produced 3,500 tonnes of steel for the newly-launched HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, is in the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland seat which the Conservatives won with a 3.6 per cent swing from Labour in June.

The Tories now have a narrow 1,020 majority and Mr Corbyn acknowledged that it is a seat his party has to take back if it is to win power.

Yet seats, such as Bishop Auckland and Easington, across the Durham coalfield recorded similar swings away from his party as it struggled to connect with its traditional working class heartland.

Mr Corbyn said: “We put on votes in all regions of the country and often where we lost we still had historically high levels of vote, but there is an issue, obviously. The message is that if you want your children to have decent education and not leave university with £50,000 debt, if you want a secure health service, then a Labour government is prepared to take the strong decision of taxing the corporations at the top end in order to give us that community in the future.

“We have to get that message across.

“We have strong support among young people and weaker support among much older people. I’m proud of the increase in our support at the election, but we’ve got a bit further to go.”

Several Labour MPs in Durham did not give Mr Corbyn their support during the election, and the new party chairman, Ian Lavery, a Northumbrian MP, has recently said that the party is now “too broad a church”, which moderate MPs have taken as a veiled threat. 

Mr Corbyn sounded more conciliatory today, and said: “It is a very big party and people have lots of discussions and debates. 

“The party is now bigger, more united, more active, and more effective than it has been for a long time. Last Saturday, we had a campaigning day with 400 events around the country – this is a party that’s going to be out there in the community. It is community-based campaigning that is going to win the next election.”

He said he didn’t think the election would be in August, but he said: “I would hope it would be as soon as possible as I can’t see how this government can survive on the basis of a strange deal which involves putting £1bn into Northern Ireland and nothing into the English regions.”

He said his shadow cabinet members were refining the party’s manifesto during their summer holidays – he was accompanied on his visit by Middlesbrough MP Andy MacDonald who holds the transport brief and is working on the mechanics of taking the railways back into public ownership – ready for the election.

He seemed, though, to be genuinely excited by today’s big gig at the Gala.

“It is probably the biggest working class demonstration and festival in Europe, and I’m very honoured and privileged to be invited,” he said.