Re: Announce: The Writing on the Wall

Malcolm Douglas8/2/06 3:23 AM

Karl Dallas ('100 Songs of Toil', 1974, 227-8) suggests that the song
refers to the strike of 1844, but provides no evidence.

Incidentally, a retired miner in 1984 could easily have heard the song in its
revival form a quarter of a century or more previously.

LOL My great Uncle George - a miner from Delaval - would have given you
short shrift and a lesson in history...

That song and other songs of that type - were frowned upon by the Union and
had been banned in the local Miners' Welfares and various pubs and later
clubs in the region for a century. The growing Northumberland and Durham
Miner's Union didn't at any stage want division; they wanted unity and
solidarity for good reason and to heal the wounds with later Unionised
immigrant labour.

When he heard me (a non miner) singing the BM song in the mid sixties, my
Uncle George was amused, pointing out that the song - and others like it
were very divisive. He also said that if I sang that song in Delaval Club,
that I'd very likely get chucked out - or worse - a good howkin'. It's
probably no longer true now - but that was the case in the mid sixties.

As a result, the songs were rarely heard in public until the post-war folk
revival and then some were watered down a bit with some of the more
vitriolic and overtly racist stuff removed.

The song's lyrics are about the events of the 1844 strike and the violent
events of the time (as sung) in SE Northumberland - in Blyth, Delaval,
Hartley and Seghill in particular are history - and recorded in local papers
of the time. There was another pitched battle in the Avenue leading to
Avenue head in Delaval.

The song was no doubt revived in later strike actions by striking factions
against blacklegs. Whether the lyrics we know now were written at the time
of the first strike (1844), or some years afterwards - IMO the more likely -
and whether it borrowed a tune from elsewhere, or it changed tunes or lyrics
later is not known - but likely. Expert musicologists and song collections
authors aside, this is about real history, events and real people.

CR

.

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