A photographic print of Industry, Fuel & Power - Coal, Miners - Welfare - Galas & Fetes, Nottingham Miners 1957/-

ELEVEN brass bands marched in the big parade - the gayest concentration of oompah-oompah for many a year. The occasion: the Nottinghamshire Miners' rally at Mansfield on Saturday. Tableaux and bands joined in a mile-long parade through the town. Rows and rows of pitland's finest virtuosos. ON TAPE Said miner Wilf Harper, of Howard Street, Sutton-in-Ashfield: "This sort of music is part of our way of life round here." That is why 62-year-old Wilf, once a member of Teversall colliery band, was busy with his tape-recorder on the bandstand at Mansfield's Berry Hill. He said: "Some of my mates, disabled and crippled in the pits, can't leave their homes to listen to the bands. When I play these tapes to them it will be just as though they were here today." COAL QUEEN The National Union of Mineworkers, who organised this 14th annual rally, laid on a packed programme of entertainment for 20,000 miners and their families. High spot was the crowning of 17-year-old Monica Smith as Nottinghamshire's Coal Queen. Monica's father, 38-year-old Ron Smith, a face-worker at Bolsover Colliery, Chesterfield, decalred: "I'm the proudest dad here today." Monica and her two attendants - Mrs Margaret Smith, aged 21, of Calverton, and Miss Pamela Woodcock, 18, of Mansfield Woodhouse - were chosen from 36 finalists. The fair-haired Coal Queen, a former grammar-school sixth-former, plans to train as a maths teacher when she leaves school. FASHIONS While wives watched a fashion show and children enjoyed donkey rides, the mine-workers listened to speeches from Mr. George Brown, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and Mr Will Paynter, NU.M. secretary. The prize for the best band of the march went to the Black Diamonds of Bestwood Colliery. Harworth Colliery gained four awards in the tableaux competition. For the rest there were whippet races, physical culture displays, boxing and wrestling - and plenty of sunshine, which, like almost everything else at the rally, was free. WILLIAMS, BIRMINGHAM... NOTTINGHAM MINERS RALLY. Harry (left) and Tomm Marry wait to enter the whippet race. INDUSTRY - FUEL & POWER - NOTTINGHAM MINERS GALA - 1963