Sunday 16 December 2012

The Cause and the Colliery Board


This week's song is sung by James Froud, an excellent singer songwriter who has recently started attending the session:

"Inspired by the documentary 'all our working lives' the song is a fictional story of a man starting his mining career during the reign of the national coal board only to find the mine is closed years later. I was struck by the Victorian living conditions in mining towns and the optimism felt by people after the formation of the coal board, only to be betrayed."


James

Said you were a coal mining man
Said you worked hard all your life
And if anyone had ever given you the chance
You would have shone like the brightest light

Don't remember much about the swinging sixties
Don't remember much about free love
Just your mother scrimping and saving
Trying to make sure you had enough

In nineteen sixty five,
You started your job for life
Proud to follow in the footsteps
Proud to know what was right

Your fathers had been calling for years
To be working for the public and the pockets of their peers
Yea these really were the good old days
Taking the very first steps towards the socialist state

Ch: And now when your sitting on your own,
You haven't been back since the day you were gone
It's like what you get ain't what you ordered,
The difference between the cause and the colliery board

Investment was poorest into the pit,
Starting the mechanisation of the seems that had been hit
Older men said you didn't know you're born,
Working in the days of the national colliery board

Well then that truly was the case
Your skin got thick and tough and your back began to break
Looking back you began to love the toil,
Getting out became your mantra, in your heart this was your home.

Ch

Do you remember that day back in June,
Everyone gathered outside the gates to hear the news.
It hit you like a hammer had been swung,
The colliery band marched home playing a slow marching drum

You took it as an opportunity,
Said it was your chance to be free,
Always wanted to go see the world some day,
Eke out some of that severance pay.

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