Durham County Record Office: the official archive service for County Durham and Darlington

VE Day and the Durham Miners' Association

Part of an online exhibition from Durham County Record Office commemorating the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe on 8 May 1945

Soldiers from B Company, 9th Battalion Durham Light Infantry in Kangaroo armoured carrier, Germany, late March 1945 (D/DLI Acc: 10050)

Coal fuelled the British war effort, and during the Second World War over one hundred thousand miners worked in the Durham coalfield, producing millions of tons of coal, but at the cost of hundreds of miners killed and thousands more injured.

On 26 May 1945, with the end of the war in Europe, the Durham Miners' Association's council met at the union's headquarters at Redhills in Durham and stood in silence 'as a tribute to those who lost their lives in the war against Nazism and Fascism'.

Durham Miners' Association minutes, January - June 1945 (D/DMA 1/11/42). Image © reproduced with kind permission of the Durham Miners' Association.

Back to 'We have come through' - remembering VE Day 1945 exhibition homepage.