Doug Nicholls, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, has renewed calls for the release of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan at the Durham Miners Gala 2019, an event attended by 200,000 trade unionists, socialists and activists.
Durham Miners Gala 2019
The Durham Miners Gala or Big Meeting, now in its 135th year, is attended by senior trade unionists and Labour Party politicians including leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn and Laura Pidcock as well as hundreds of thousands of organised working-class people from up and down the country.
International solidarity theme
The Durham Miners Gala in 2018 dedicated its international solidarity theme to the Freedom for Öcalan campaign and the campaign was honoured to return and take part in this year’s celebration of working-class organising and struggle.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for the greatest honour I’ve had in my life, to address this great meeting on the 120th year of the GFTU (General Federation of Trade Unions and the 150th of the DMA (Durham Miners Association).
We should appreciate first today, those sisters and brothers who since we last met have been prepared to lay down their lives for our cause. I’m thinking of the 7,000 Kurdish people who went on hunger strike to bring the world’s attention the continuing 20-year imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan who, as we said last year, should be free.
Doug Nicholls, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions