ramblings and things
1,303,797 poems read
Glasshoughton Colliery - A Story Of King Coal
Just an outdoor retail park,
Lots of shops on a circular street
But how many walking there know
About the history beneath their feet.
Nearly five hundred years ago
They were taking surface coal,
Two hundred years after that
They opened the first pit hole.
Seventy years on came
The first deep mining pit,
From then on thousands of hours
Spent maintaining and working it.
Miners demonstrated in Castleford
Against a reduction in pay
This in Nineteen hundred and three
A significant historical day
Nineteen eighty four to eighty five
The bitter national miners' strike,
Thatcher versus the unions,
A period of dispute and dislike.
Families destroyed,
Father against son
And in the end
None of them won;
With families to feed
It was so easy to crack
And some in despair
Broke the strike and went back.
The union was defeated
With more than a year gone by,
Miners starved back to work
But with their heads held high.
A bitter social battle
That the workers lost
The dismantling of the industry
Being the ultimate bitter cost.
In the communities,
Bitter splits still exist,
Ex striker and striker
Only reluctantly co exist
Five hundred years supply of coal
Still left there beneath the land
Yet we import much needed coal
From suppliers like Poland;
Possible victims to blackmail
As the demand for power grows
And the price they can extract
Determines where their coal goes.
On this fine spring day we walk around
On miners' bones and seams of coal,
Many ignorant of that long bitter fight that
Ended with our nation near losing its soul.
Lots of shops on a circular street
But how many walking there know
About the history beneath their feet.
Nearly five hundred years ago
They were taking surface coal,
Two hundred years after that
They opened the first pit hole.
Seventy years on came
The first deep mining pit,
From then on thousands of hours
Spent maintaining and working it.
Miners demonstrated in Castleford
Against a reduction in pay
This in Nineteen hundred and three
A significant historical day
Nineteen eighty four to eighty five
The bitter national miners' strike,
Thatcher versus the unions,
A period of dispute and dislike.
Families destroyed,
Father against son
And in the end
None of them won;
With families to feed
It was so easy to crack
And some in despair
Broke the strike and went back.
The union was defeated
With more than a year gone by,
Miners starved back to work
But with their heads held high.
A bitter social battle
That the workers lost
The dismantling of the industry
Being the ultimate bitter cost.
In the communities,
Bitter splits still exist,
Ex striker and striker
Only reluctantly co exist
Five hundred years supply of coal
Still left there beneath the land
Yet we import much needed coal
From suppliers like Poland;
Possible victims to blackmail
As the demand for power grows
And the price they can extract
Determines where their coal goes.
On this fine spring day we walk around
On miners' bones and seams of coal,
Many ignorant of that long bitter fight that
Ended with our nation near losing its soul.
Comment On This Poem --- Vote for this poem
Glasshoughton Colliery - A Story Of King Coal
Glasshoughton Colliery - A Story Of King Coal