The Blackleg Miner

Some of you will know I have something of a penchant for lefty folk music – well folk music really but quite a lot of it is pretty lefty! And, while driving back from Carlisle to sunny Cullingworth, I was listening to a little ditty entitled “The Blackleg Miner”. Let me share with you some of the lyrics:

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place,
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a footrace
to catch the blackleg miner.
And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner.

Harkening to this, a thought struck me about strikes, unions and the problems of collective action. Essentially, what right do these men have to enforce what they desire through violence, bullying and intimidation? What right do they have to treat someone who just wishes to go to work, earn a wage and feed his family with such bullying intimidation?

By all means disagree with the strike-breaker, perhaps even have nothing to do with the blackleg. But violence and intimidation are wrong however much they are enforcing the desire of the majority. And the punishment meted out to those who break a strike – the intimidatory bullying – continues long beyond the end of the dispute. Here’s a report from 2009 in the Scottish Daily Record:

None of the strike-breakers approached by the Record would agree to be interviewed. Some have died, some moved away, a few defiant individuals stood their ground pleading their case but, to a man, they were reluctant to re-open old wounds.

This includes Jim Pearson, 76, of Dunfermline, who worked at the Longannet pit and was the first-miner in Fife to return to work. Pearson regularly appeared in the Record during 1984 after breaking the strike.

There were furious scenes on the day he returned. More than 150 police clashed with 200 pickets as he made his way to work. His van was ambushed by around 100 brick-throwing pickets and he ran the gauntlet for two terrifying miles with blood running down his face.

All because he chose to challenge the majority decision – to make a different and pretty tough choice about his life.

I guess we make our choices but no-one deserves this kind of treatment just for going to work.

....

Finding the secret places...

We built a den once. It was on the bank of a stream hidden in dense foliage. A sheet of rusty corrugated iron, some old fence posts and bits of old tow rope. It was great - we could watch the stream replete with minnows and sticklebacks, nip through the fence behind to scrump in the allotments and discuss the great matters that concerned us as 10 year old children. It was away from the boring world of grown ups - a secret place.

Except today we're not allowed secret places. Such things frighten those who know better - its not just the idea of "young children" playing out on their own next to a stream but the whole idea of the secret. That place we think is just ours - our den, our magic dell, our place of safety.

Today we just assume the worst. If it isn't that the children are indulging in "anti-social behaviour" (which is an unspecified and general allegation describing any noisy, slightly risky activity undertaken by people younger than us) or else that the riverbank is riddled with funny men just waiting to snaffle the passing 10 year old.

But those secret places are still there. We still seek them out - either in the real world or in that fairyland our minds create. And in those places we are free and calm - content to while away time unbothered by the angry, the interfering and the officious. Those secret places are where we dream our dreams. Where we make the armour that protects us from the horrid real world. Where we can experience the magic that makes living tolerable.

In those secret places dwell the things of our imagination - mythic creatures of our choice. And these things are as real as the dusty, dark, dreariness of the world we head out into from the secret place. The world of money, of toil, of anger and of duty. That world of the busybody.

I plan on spending more time in my secret place - when I find it again.

....

Pride and the Parks Department

We brushed up the broken glass
Gingerly picked up the condom some youth left at the bottom of the slide
Tried to get the swing gate back on its hinges
And wondered…

…do we just give up?

We stepped round the spit and sick
Shook our heads at the fresh gum on the tarmac beside the benches
Picked up the crisp packets and the beer cans
And wondered…

…maybe we did give up?

Glass smashed in the phone box
The swing twisted, broken – no use to local kids
That skateboard park the youngsters petitioned for…

…burnt

We come back.
We mend, we clean, we tidy…
So good kids can play, mums can chat and nice folk sit in peace
Or play bowls

…we didn’t give up.

....