North East miners swing behind Jeremy Corbyn Former miners in the North East have swung behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour by launching a campaign to keep him as […]

Former miners in the North East have swung behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour by launching a campaign to keep him as leader.

The Harton and Westoe Miners’ Banner Group in South Tyneside, formerly a branch of the National Union of Mineworkers, are campaigning in support for Mr Corbyn in the hope that he will bring a “greater voice to the working class”.

It comes after Labour MPs who oppose Jeremy Corbyn were banned last month from speaking at the Durham Miners’ Gala.

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Corbyn sings from the same hymn book as working class people. If we want change, he’s the man to do it. John Watson, Harton and Westoe Miners’ Banner Group

John Watson, secretary of the group, said after a campaign meeting in South Shields: “This is an area that was built on mining, on ship building, on steel. We’re stil struggling here.

”Corbyn sings from the same hymn book as working class people,“ he told the Evening Chronicle. ”If we want change, he’s the man to do it.

“The majority of working class people support him, he is the opposition, something different and not more of the same New Labour which got us into this mess.”

Political awakening

Mr Corbyn took time out from a visit to the North East to talk to former South Shields miners campaigning to defend his leadership last month.

His rival Owen Smith, the son of the south Wales miners’ official historian Dai Smith, has previously described how he marched as a teenager 1984 miners’ strike and how it led to his ”political awakening“.

Last month he visited Orgreave in South Yorkshire and called for a full public inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave, where police on horseback charged at striking miners picketing a coking plant.