Songs: Mineworkers
The following desribes a selection of posters about the miners' strike in 1984 but encompass pictures and quotations from the nineteenth century. Each has the logo 'COAL NOT DOLE.'
Poster for the 1984/85 Strike. 'Time and time again, the pitman has given his best and pulled the country through, and like the old pit gallowa' that's pulled his heart out for years, his reward has been the knacker's yard. Things have changed a little bit, there's Meals on Wheels, and a few bob a week, instead of the work house, but it's still a far cry from the reward due to him' says Jock Purdon who was a retired pit deputy at Harraton Colliery, County Durham.
We Will Stand the Struggle Through .
The original version of this song was published as a broadsheet and sold to raise funds to help Durham miners who went on strike against a thirteen and a half per cent cut in pay. It was adapted from The Durham Lockout written by Thomas Armstrong in 1892. The poster shows a picture of Houghton Main Colliery in 1893 and Newstead Colliery, Nottingham in 1984
A Warning . Sung to the same tune as We will stand
This is a new version of the song Farewell to the 'Cotia (an abbreviation of Nova Scotia) adapted from Jock Purdon's words by Mel Calladine. Purdon was a deputy at Harraton Colliery in County Durham when he wrote it. The pit was always known as the 'Cotia and when it closed as part of Lord Robens' 'rationalisation' schemes, the miners were given the alternative of moving to Nottingham. The song was adapted for the 1984 strike by Calladine, a miner from Bufford Colliery, Nottingham.
You working miners mark my words
The time is drawing nigh
You'll have to change your language lads
You'll have to change your beer.
But leave your picks behind you
You'll ne'er need them again
And off you go to Nottingham
To join Macgregor's men.
The picture on this poster is by Frans O Catbasaish and depicts a miner looking desolate and lost, his sad eyes staring wildly.
A book by Jock Purdon called Songs of the Durham Coalfield tells the history of the family and working life of Jock Purdon. The first song is The Easington Explosion remembering the disaster of 1951. To be classified as a disaster, an accident or an explosion at a mine has to claim at least ten lives. Easington claimed the lives of eighty-one miners plus two rescue men. Easington was one of the most modern and productive mines in Europe. The explosion was caused by picks striking yellow lustrous iron sulphide mineral, which ignited firedamp bringing down one hundred and twenty yards of roof. What made it so unfortunate was the fact that the explosion happened between shifts so there were forty-three men relieving thirty-eight and the one survivor died in hospital a few hours later.
Farewell to 'Cotia written when the pit was closing and many had taken the option to move to Nottingham to join Lord Roben's men in his promised land. He put it up in the pit head baths for all to see 'the death Knell had been tolled for the colliery where the men were brave and bold.'
The Echo of Pit Boots , written for the closing of the pits at Chester-le-Street, a mining town that once brewed its own beer. Purdon says to the new generation growing up there now 'the pitmen are as unreal as the shadowy figures tottering thro' the no man's land of a Great War Newsreel.'
Lovely Lady Astor would be quite funny if it was not so outrageous. Lady Astor visited the pit at Esh Winning, County Durham to ask them to take a pay cut leading to the 1926 strike. It is sung to the tune of 'Yankee Doodle'. Working class poets, songwriters and cartoonists often created humour out of the conditions they were under in their working lives, as Sam Fitton did in his portrayal of the Cotton Industry early in the twentieth century.
The Wee Trapper Lad is the story of a young lad who had to keep watch at the pit, who was frightened awake but too frightened to sleep. Trappers were boys of the youngest class, employed to open and shut the doors to keep the ventilation in the working regular. The practice in the early days was to use boys of not more that six years of age and they remained in the pit for eighteen hours per day for five pence.
Hally's Piebald Gallowa is the story of Jimmy Hall's piebald Galloway Pit Pony called Saul eating the 'Lumley Six' banner as it hung out to dry.
'The Gallowa was hungry,
the banner tasted good
It 'et half of Keir Hardie
And chewed up Martin Jude'
The Bevin Boys Lament about wartime conscripts put together in 'The Plough' next to Pelaw Pit in the 1940s where on Saturdays nights they spent time round the piano. This started Purdon off on his song writing.
The Binding Strike of 1810 . A 'binding' or contract was 'a binding during the will of the master to prevent owners taking other owners' men.' It began in October, but the pit owners wanted to change the month for two reasons. When they 'bound' miners they had to pay them two to three guineas as a contract and as it was a busy time of the year it was probable that there would be more signing on than three months later. The miners had no say in this decision and at first agreed but later regretted the decision and called a strike to resist the alteration but were tracked down and about three hundred men were imprisoned. The following year similar trouble threatened again but due to conciliatory proposals the owners eventually agreed to meet deputations of two men per colliery and a board. 'If 1810 had brought defeat, 1811 was in the moral sense, a memorable victory.' The yearly bond was for many years not a contract between two contracting partners but merely an acknowledgement by the men of a fictitious indebtedness.' The song also tells of families' suffering, evicted from their cottages into the snow and starved into submission. Pitmen had a language all of their own which became the words of the village too but which have now died with the pits themselves. It is a language that is revived by television programmes but Purdon says 'it is sad to see the speech of the Durham pitmen robbed of the respect due to a dead language, and exiled forever to the pages of the Geordie Joke Book.'
Farewell to Jobling is about the execution of miner Jobling on 3 August 1832 who was the first person gibbeted under the New Act of Parliament, which ordered the bodies of murderers to be hung in chains. He was executed for the murder of a magistrate, Mr Nicholas Fairness of South Shields but maintained his innocence. His fellow miner was never caught but shouted out 'Farewell Jobling' at the scaffold before disappearing. A great injustice was done as Weddle, a policeman, convicted of the murder of Skipsey, (Skipley in the song) a miner, was only sentenced to six months' imprisonment. As Purdon says in his song 'A scapegoat reflecting the sign of the time'
It's miners this, it's miners that says it all for Purdon:
Then there were the good old days
Depression, Doom , Despair,
Hardship was a way of life
The miner got his share.'
The Cotia Banner Looking Back with Pride , Purdon wrote about the painted silk union parade banner of the Harraton Colliery, Durham Miner Association.
The combination of Alan Bush and Matyas Seiber are found many times when researching working class movements' songs and 'Coaldust Ballads' are no exception. Many of these songs are written in a rich Northumberland dialect and many are nineteenth century collier songs. There are several about disasters including The Blantyre explosion of 1877, a colliery near Glasgow where over two hundred were killed; The Donibristle Disaster in Fife in 1901 where fourteen were killed. The Gresford Disaster of 1934 where two hundred and sixty-five were killed, had a very telling verse:
The fireman's reports they are missing
The records of forty two days
The colliery Manager had them destroyed
To cover his criminal ways.
The Trinidon Grange Explosion in 1882 killing seventy-four, was written by Thomas Armstrong, previously mentioned, known as The bard of the Tanfield Collieries, Durham who also wrote Row between the Cages about the introduction of new technology.
Many of these songs that Lloyd has compiled were not discovered until the mid twentieth century and not all authors are known. The Colliers Rant was first printed in 1793 in John Ritson's 'Northumberland Garland' but was thought to already be quite old then. A nineteenth century comedian J N Geoghegan wrote Down in a Coalmine in 1872 and another nineteenth century collier-comedian George Ridley wrote Cushie Butterfield.
One of the dialect songs in Sandgate Dandling Song written by a blind nineteenth century fiddler, Robert Nunn, a favourite performer at miners' meeting and in the hostelries on pit pay-nights. Not all the songs were from England though. Six Jolly Miners is probably from the eighteenth century, first found in print in a collection of Pennsylvania mine ballads. The origin of Miners Life is either South Wales or America. It was first recorded in West Virginia in 1940 and it is thought it was either exported from Wales to America or may have evolved among Welsh migrant miners in America.
A nineteenth century collier William Hornsby, the presumed author of The Coal-owner and the Pitman's wife is about the wife's tale of life in Hell and tells the coal-owner,
'They're turning the poor folk all out of hell,
This to make room for the rich wicked race'
She advises him to 'agree with your men and give them full price' otherwise he would be going to hell also.
The majority of these songs portray the feelings of the miners and the oppression. However there is much humour in them showing how they could still smile in the face of adversity.