by Peter Lazenby
Northern Reporter
HUNDREDS of supporters turned out to greet Jeremy Corbyn at rallies across Yorkshire at the weekend. The Labour leader attracted a full room of supporters at the historic council chamber of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) headquarters in Barnsley on Saturday. Following tradition, Mr Corbyn gave a second speech to a crowd of 300 who had been unable to get into the council chamber.
He then visited the former mining community of Featherstone in West Yorkshire, which suffered a drastic economic decline following the closure of its coalfields in the 1980s. Addressing a crowd of 1,000 people at Featherstone Rovers rugby stadium, Mr Corbyn said: The closure of the pits was not a rational decision on economic grounds.
It was a decision by a Tory leader to destroy the voice of the mineworkers, the voice of the trade unions and the political voice of the working class in Britain. Among the supporting speakers was Beth Paramor, a Momentum supporter and Labour town councillor from Todmorden in West Yorkshire who also spoke at a Morning Star benefit concert at the Trades Club in the Calder Valley.
In Barnsley Mr Corbyn met activists from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, who want a public and transparent inquiry into the so-called Battle of Orgreave in June, 1984, when armoured police attacked striking miners picketing the Orgreave coking plant outside Rotherham. Mr Corbyn backed a letter earlier this year to the then home security Theresa May calling for an investigation into the brutal attack by police. In Featherstone the Labour leader met three women school cleaners from Kinsley Academy in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
The three Leslie Leake, Marice Hall and Karen McGee are on indefinite strike after their jobs were transferred from Wakefield Council to cleaning contractor C&D Cleaning Group.
The profit-hungry privateer slashed their pay to the minimum wage and abolished sick pay.
peterlazenby@peoples-press.com
