Kate Osborne MP: Moving power to the North is exactly what is needed

From local visits, to community Pride events, the brilliant Rebel Town Festival in Jarrow, to hosting meetings on SEND in Parliament with more than 200 Parents and Rory Bremner (A good week for him to practice his Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham impressions!).

Each and every one of these events have so many common threads, they are about bringing people together, to call out injustice, to advocate for people, they have a great sense of strength and they are spaces where people come together in solidarity and pride in where they come from.

Next weekend we have the Durham Miners’ Gala – one of the biggest annual shows of solidarity right here in the North East and that will have the same spirit.

A spirit of unity amongst the hundreds of miners banners you will see banners from teachers, community activists, peace campaigners, LGBTQIA organisations, youth workers, faith groups and many more – all talking about our heritage and that working class communities are strongest when they are standing together.

At the Sunderland Pride event last Saturday, I spoke about something I’ve believed throughout my life – diversity is a strength, not a weakness.

Pride is a celebration – but it’s also something far more. It is a visible expression of people coming together to defend freedoms that were never simply handed over.

My own political activism began campaigning against Section 28 in the 1980s. I grew up in a period where people like me were told our lives and relationships were unacceptable.

But what changed things wasn’t people waiting quietly for permission. It was solidarity and people standing firmly together, communities refusing to leave others behind.

And that lesson still matters to this day.

That same spirit was evident at the recent Rebel Town Festival in Jarrow.

There is something particularly powerful about coming together in a town whose rich history is rooted in collective action and determination.

In Jarrow, we didn’t just accept decline, or wait for change to arrive from somewhere else.

Ordinary people organised and stood together taking their voices to the heart of Government.

Rebel Town captured that energy perfectly – bringing people together through culture, ideas and a belief that communities have the power to shape their own future.

It is for this reason alone why next weekend’s Durham Miners’ Gala continues to matter so much.

The Big Meeting is both a celebration of our industrial past, and one of the most powerful expressions of northern identity and solidarity anywhere in the country.

Those values of communities standing together shaped the North East and they still shape us today.

That’s why I was struck by Andy Burnham’s speech this week about community, place and where power sits in our country.

Moving power to the North is exactly what is needed, we need to move away from a system where every decision is made centrally and instead putting trust and power back into communities.

Whether it’s jobs, housing, transport or opportunities for young people, we know lasting change happens when people are trusted to shape the places they live.

Andy Burnham talked about partnership – public services, local government, community groups, trade unions and residents all pulling in the same direction.

To me, that sounds familiar.

Because that spirit already exists across South Tyneside and the wider North East region: In volunteers giving their time, in organisations supporting families, in local campaigns like Save our Stanley’s, protecting the services we all care about.

In the national campaigns I am working on for SEND provision, like the parents of Stanleys they are organising together, ensuring their voices and the voices of their kids are heard by politicians.

You see it every day in neighbours looking after one another, and coming together to stand up for what is right.

Too often the North East gets talked about in terms of what we need, but we should also talk about what we already have.

We have resilience and creativity, we have pride in place; and above all, we have each other.

Whether standing together at Pride.

Gathering in Jarrow.

Marching behind banners in Durham a week on Saturday.

Or simply helping a neighbour through difficult times.

The message is the same – Unity is strength.

If there is one thing our region has always known, it is that when communities stand together, when we refuse to be divided then there is very little we cannot achieve.

I will always fight for our community in Parliament and locally and I will be proudly marching at Durham next weekend. With the exception of Covid, I have only missed one Durham in the 36 years I have lived in Tyneside – I hope to see you all there!