Loved by young and old alike, nothing unites a community like gala days

GALAS have the potential to unite entire communities, as well as offering an opportunity for people to have fun, dress up and take centre stage.

Neighbourhoods across the Lothians have long enjoyed gala events, and with news this week that Newhaven is to resurrect its celebrations – for the first time in 15 years – it looks like the traditional summer time occasions are set to continue.

In the former fishing village, keen youngsters from Victoria Primary School have been busy preparing costumes and rehearsing for their roles – which include the prestigious gala king and queen – ahead of the celebration next Saturday.

The same excitement would have been felt by those children who put hours of effort into their fancy dress costumes for the Davidson's Mains and Cramond Gala Day, back in June 1982.

With bunting lining the streets, eager onlookers packed onto the pavements to catch a glimpse of the children as they made their way through the neighbourhood, many taking photographs that are sure to have become treasured family keepsakes.

On 29 May, 1971, Leith Council of Churches held its gala day, which saw hundreds of Leithers pack themselves on to Leith Links as Queenie Herron, the wife of the then Moderator of the Church of Scotland, presented eager children with prizes for the best fancy dress costumes.

That weekend it was gala fever across the Lothians with similar events held in Penicuik and in Currie.

Back in May 1964, hundreds of children were involved in the West Pilton celebrations.

Pictured in their school uniforms, they watched as Linda Young was crowned gala queen at the crowning ceremony at the gas works sports site on Granton Road.

Nancy Robb, along with every other young girl who has ever had the thrill of being chosen for the role, would have felt the same excitement when she was crowned gala queen at the 1953 Whitburn Gala Day.

Not all gala days are centered around children. At the Old Town Gala in June 1989, people of all ages joined a procession down the Royal Mile.

In June 1979, thousands of miners and their families from across Scotland made their way to Holyrood Park for their annual celebration, using the event as an opportunity to warn the Conservative government of the day of their desire for change.

They said that if Ministers continued to "hive off public sector industries, cut public spending further and increase prices" there was little hope of avoiding confrontation.

Ten years before, majorettes from Kinnell Colliery, in Bo'ness, took part in another miners' gala day, which this time warned the government to keep its hands "off the trade unions".

Nearly 100,000 people attended the gala in Holyrood Park to hear Mr J W Jones, the then vice-president of the Transport and General Workers' Union, declare the government had turned "socialism into rheumatism", while rejecting its plans to reform the unions.

Miners marched to the park from the Mineworkers' Union headquarters in Hillside Crescent – reported at the time as a "glorious blaze of sound and colour which drew crowds to the kerbside along Greenside Place, Leith Street and Waterloo Place".

Along with the majorettes, dressed in American-style clothing, there were 20 girls who paraded in front of a panel of judges, all eager to be chosen as the Scottish Miners' Coal Queen.