David John Douglass, sometimes known as Dave or "''Danny the Red''", is a political activist in

Tyneside Tyneside is a built-up area across the banks of the River Tyne in northern England. Residents of the area are commonly referred to as Geordies. The whole area is surrounded by the North East Green Belt. The population of Tyneside as published i ...

and

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

. He is a member of the

IWW The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general ...

, the NUM and

Class War Class War is an anarchist group and newspaper established by Ian Bone and others in 1983 in the United Kingdom. An incarnation of Class War was briefly registered as a political party for the purposes of fighting the 2015 United Kingdom gener ...

, and was formerly in the

Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) :''There was also a Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) in Peru.'' The Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) was a socialist political party in Britain, based in Birmingham.Peter Barberis, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley, ''Encyclopedia ...

and the Socialist Union (Internationalist), of which he was a leading member. He is a regular contributor to the ''

Weekly Worker The ''Weekly Worker'' is a newspaper published by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) (CPGB-PCC). The paper is known on the left for its polemical articles, and for its close attention to Marxist theory and the po ...

'', the newspaper of the

Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) The Communist Party of Great Britain is a political group which publishes the '' Weekly Worker'' newspaper. The CPGB (PCC) claims to have "an internationalist duty to uphold the principle, 'One state, one party'. To the extent that the European ...

. He has also written ''Pit Talk in County Durham'' (1973), a book about the dialect

Pitmatic __NOTOC__ Pitmatic (originally: "Pitmatical", colloquially known as "Yakka") is a group of traditional Northern English dialects spoken in rural areas of the Northumberland and Durham Coalfield in England. The separating dialectal development ...

. He holds an MA in Industrial Relations and Law. He worked as a coalminer in the coalfields of

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...

and

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

, and was NUM Branch Delegate for Hatfield Colliery from 1979. He appears in the documentary ''The Miner's Campaign Tapes'' to discuss the role of the popular media in the strike of 1984–85. In 1994–95 he was Branch Secretary at Hatfield Main, but after the pit was privatised the NUM no longer had any recognition there. From 1994 to 2006 he helped to run the Miners Community Advice Centre in Stainforth. In 1999, Douglass appeared on the

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

television series ''Living with the Enemy,'' "in which ideological enemies spend a week in each other's company," at the home of Lord Rowallan of Kilmarnock. He worked at the

National Coal Mining Museum for England The National Coal Mining Museum for England is based at the site of Caphouse Colliery in Overton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It opened in 1988 as the Yorkshire Mining Museum and was granted national status in 1995. History Caphouse C ...

as a researcher on the exhibition ''Strike, Not the End of It'', and subsequently published a book with the same title on the history of industrial disputes in British mining. The three volumes of his autobiography, ''Geordies — Wa Mental'', ''The Wheel's Still in Spin'' and ''Ghost Dancers'', were published by Christie Books between 2008 and 2010.

Published works

* ''Pit Life in County Durham'', History Workshop, 1972 * ''Pit Talk in County Durham'', History Workshop, 1973 * ''A Miner's Life'' (with Joel Krieger), Law Book Co Australasia, 1983 * ''Tell Us Lies About The Miners'', DAM, 1985 * ''Come And Wet This Truncheon'', DAM/Canary Press, 1986 * ''A Year Of Our Lives'', Hooligan Press, 1986 * ''Pit Sense versus the State: a history of militant miners in the Doncaster area'', Phoenix Press, year unknown * ''All Power to the Imagination!'',

Federation, 1999 * ''Strike, Not the End of the Story: Reflections on the Major Coal Mining Strikes in Britain'', National Coal Mining Museum for England Publications 4, Overton, 2005, * ''Geordies — Wa Mental'', Christie Books, 2008 * ''The Wheel's Still in Spin'', Christie Books, 2009 * ''Ghost Dancers'', Christie Books, 2010

References

External links

Miners Advice Website page on Dave DouglassDave Douglass articles for Weekly WorkerDavid Douglass Archive at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers
- papers and printed books relating to NUM and the 1980s strikes. {{DEFAULTSORT:Douglass, David John Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Industrial Workers of the World members Trade unionists from Yorkshire Trade unionists from Newcastle upon Tyne Proletarian literature