The president of the Durham Miners' Association has said he would "rather be found dead in a ditch" than invite the county's new Conservative MPs to the Miners' Gala.
Alan Mardghum said there was "categorically no chance" that the four Tories who won seats in Durham constituencies would be welcome at the historic working class festival.
Mr Mardghum spoke just over a month after the shock general election result which saw North West Durham, Sedgefield, Darlington and Bishop Auckland - part of Labour’s previously impregnable "red wall" - fall to the Tories.
In an interview with the BBC, he said: "To paraphrase [Boris] Johnson, I'd rather be found dead in a ditch than invite them or Johnson to the Gala.
"We never saw Arthur Scargill invited to the Tory party conference.
"Why would we invite Tories to the Durham Miners' Gala?
"They did their best to absolutely destroy the Durham miners and the miners of Great Britain."
He added: "I'm not going to stop them from coming into Durham [on the day], it's a free country, but I would suggest that if any of them are thinking of coming in, that they speak to the police who do an absolutely marvellous job ensuring all of our personal security, so they might need to speak to the police to make sure that they're safe on the day."
Following the results in December, Michael Gove had gloated that "the Durham Miner's Gala and the Notting Hill Carnival will take place in seats held by Conservatives".
While the gala actually takes place in the City of Durham - an area still controlled by Labour - the concept of a Conservative MP in an area once dominated by mining left many stunned.
Tory MP Richard Holden, who caused one of the biggest shocks of the night by taking Laura Pidcock's seat in North West Durham, has previously said he would be "more than happy" to go to the Gala.
"I will go where my voters are," he told ChronicleLive.
"I will tell you now, on the doorstep of every colliery village I've been knocking on, I've had ex-miners, their children and widows tell me that they had never voted Conservative, but would now.
"Actual working class people in the North East have basically rejected the class war politics."
The Durham Miners' Gala, a historic working class festival and the largest annual gathering of trade unionists in the UK, has long been a bastion of Labour support. Over recent years it has regularly hosted speeches from Jeremy Corbyn .
