{"id":589,"date":"2014-11-03T16:28:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T16:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/?p=589"},"modified":"2024-08-13T17:16:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T17:16:10","slug":"miner-poets-striking-a-rhyming-seam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/?p=589","title":{"rendered":"Miner poets: striking a rhyming seam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buried deep in this summer\u2019s Latitude Festival line up was a curious outpost from a very different cultural moment.\u00a0 The three-day event’s insufferable up-from-London-middle-classness is a well worn riff for compares.\u00a0 But among the up-and-coming performance poets who provide the mainstay of the ‘poetry-tent’ program, was a celebration of verse written by coal miners<\/a> and their families during the 1984-5 strike.<\/p>\n

\"MinersLattitude1\"<\/a>It was curated by Dr Katy Shaw<\/a>\u00a0(at the microphone – left), a University of Brighton academic who has made a study of the colliers\u2019 couplets. \u201cPoetry was very important to the struggle,\u201d she said and called the strike “a spectre that haunts contemporary events”.\u00a0 She was joined on the stage by Michael Rosen<\/a>, Luke Wright<\/a>, Jemima Foxtrot, Atilla The Stockbroker<\/a>, Andy Bennett and others.<\/p>\n

It was a mixed bag – poetically speaking.\u00a0 Much of the miners’ verse was simple stuff.\u00a0 I admire anyone who crafts economic and rhythmic expressions of their feelings; and with the benefit of distance \u00a0their verse provides illuminating period testimony.\u00a0 In a strict, technical sense, however, most of their rhyme-rich poesy was unexceptional. \u00a0Here is the anonymous work of a striker at the Leeds pit Ledston Luck.<\/p>\n

As the strike grows longer
\nOur resolve grows stronger
\nMaggie thought she\u2019d starve us back
\nBut she couldn\u2019t be wronger<\/p>\n

There were some genuinely strong poems, for example those by Jean Gittins, a selection of whose work can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More intriguing was that the event took place and that it attracted one of the poetry tent\u2019s largest audiences.\u00a0 Wright was two at the time of the strike, Foxtrot was surely born after its conclusion and Shaw looked too young to have squared up on an NUM picket line.\u00a0 Plenty of events in the intervening period have done more to shape our lives for good and ill: the collapse of communism, the end of the Cold War and 9\/11 to name three.\u00a0 Significant anniversaries of all three have passed without Latitude\u2019s poets doffing their caps.<\/p>\n

It seems doubly odd to me because, for all that at the time the strike seemed both personal and seismic, I have reflected little on it in recent years.<\/p>\n

My grandfather worked at Morton Colliery in Derbyshire<\/a>, my mother was at grammar school with Dennis Skinner.\u00a0 Skinner took the unusual step for a successful eleven-plusser of joining his father down the pit – my mother<\/a> went to art school.\u00a0 Nevertheless, her sympathies remained resolutely with the miners.\u00a0 I watched the \u201972 and \u201974 strikes on television with her to explain to me which side we were on.\u00a0 I remember discussing with her Arthur Scargill’s prospects of leading his union relatively early in his tenure as President of the Yorkshire NUM.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to believe now that the later action had schools as well as factories on a three-day week as the lights went out.<\/p>\n

Evidence of the big strike, when it came, was everywhere in Leeds and Bradford.\u00a0 All available wall space was covered in posters encouraging support for the strikers.\u00a0 There were daily bucket collections in the city centres.\u00a0 Several times I took the bus to Pontefract, Castleford and elsewhere to join the pickets.\u00a0 I marched, I collected money, I went to endless speaker meetings and donated food.<\/p>\n

There is nothing unusual about my experiences, particularly for those of us with deep-seam progressive sentiments.\u00a0 On reflection, though, I am slightly surprised that I could still offer an informed opinion about the role of NACODS in the dispute, ponder Scargill being wrong-footed by the pit-head coal stocks, and name half-a-dozen then members of the NUM’s national executive.<\/p>\n

This odd intertwining was underlined for me with the release of the feature film ‘Pride’<\/a>.\u00a0 It is a charming, Richard-Curtisesque telling of the story of the \u2018Lesbian And Gay Support The Miners\u2019 group that raised money from their own community for the strikers.\u00a0 The script is based, in part, on a contemporary, rather DIY, documentary<\/a> about the group.\u00a0 Watching this – whose existence I was unaware or, I was amazed to find a short interview with my late friend Graham Nicholas, who unbeknownst to me, was an active member of this support group.\u00a0 I should have guessed. One of my fondest memories of him was a discussion, not long before he died, about our shared admiration for the Scottish miners\u2019 leader, Mick McGahey.\u00a0\u00a0 Does anyone today converse about the relative merits of trades union leaders?<\/p>\n

We have much still to learn about the unacceptable, probably illegal ploys that were used to undermine the strikers – that is why the Orgreave Truth And Justice Campaign<\/a> is so important.\u00a0 However, Michael Rosen and Attilla The Stockbroker called on the Latitude crowd to ‘ never forget the lessons of the miners\u2019 strike’.\u00a0 It is apt, therefore, to reflect on what these actually were?<\/p>\n

Attilla favours rhyme over profundity<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026our once mighty, proud labour movement
\nIs shackled, and timid, and tame
\nBut this poet will always remember
\nAll the brave men and women I met
\nWe will carry on fighting for justice –
\nAnd we\u2019ll never, no never, forget.<\/p>\n

But Rosen couldn\u2019t contain his inner sectarian, lustily denouncing Neil Kinnock as the traitor who forsook his class.\u00a0 Notwithstanding that, though, he told the crowd that the strike was \u201cto some extents a victory – because of the solidarity\u201d.<\/p>\n

It would be tempting to think this true – but solidarity is an ethereal commodity when compared to an industry that has all but disappeared,\u00a0a union reduced to a husk and scores of communities devastated.<\/p>\n

Some clearly continue to believe that Scargill took capitalism to the brink; that if only every union had acted in solidarity; and that if the Labour party’ leadership had not nuanced its support for the NUM, then Thatcher might have fallen – and then, who knows?<\/p>\n

On balance, I thought that was a fantasy then, and still do.\u00a0 With the benefit of hindsight, the miners\u2019 strike was very nearly the full stop in the period of industrial militancy that stretched from the early 1960s and throughout the 1970s.\u00a0 The tactical lessons of the miners\u2019 catastrophic, sick-making defeat to me are these.\u00a0 Trades unions should pick their fights carefully. \u00a0Whatever syndicalist dreams fill your head, the state, with its bottomless resources, is always going to be a formidable opponent.\u00a0 And there are few things quite so dangerous as a leader in thrall to their own rhetoric.<\/p>\n

More loftily, it would be refreshing if, as a movement at least, some of our drape-around mythology was the stuff of unequivocal victories?\u00a0 Who knows, a triumphant narrative might even lift our poetry to new heights?<\/p>\n

Photo: Freephoto.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buried deep in this summer\u2019s Latitude Festival line up was a curious outpost from a very different cultural moment.\u00a0 The three-day event’s insufferable up-from-London-middle-classness is a well worn riff for compares.\u00a0 But among the up-and-coming performance poets who provide the …<\/p>\n

Miner poets: striking a rhyming seam<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}