Its seems that this occasional series is becoming a survey of English labour songs. That’s not my intent, and despite my forum avatar I am not- nor have I ever been- a member of the Communist Party!
That said, the latest song to hook my brain is Ed Pickford’s Pound a Week Rise. The lyrics follow, feel free to jump down right into them.
Pickford wrote the song in the 1960’s, reflecting on a recent labor dispute among English coal miners and the Coal Board. For me the real beauty of this song is the tightness of the lyrics fixed to the meter of the song. This is particularly impressive as the song represents real events, and so Pickford doesn’t have infinite possibilities with where the song can go.
As a protest / labor song, Rise, isn’t particularly inspiring as the narrative ends rather anti-climatically. But from an aesthetic perspective, the song shines out (the mathematics of the lyric/music interplay). There is a particularly nice arrangement of it on John Doyle & Liz Carroll’s Double Play. Doyle’s slick guitar work doesn’t overpower the words, and Carroll’s fiddle provides a great accent in parts. You can hear this played on the Folk Show of course, but here is also a link to a semi-live performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUVSz7t2P58
Pound a Week Rise by Ed Pickford
Come all of you colliers who work down the mine
From Scotland to South Wales, from Teesdale to Tyne
I’ll sing you a song of a pound a week rise
And the men who were fooled by the Government’s lies
And it’s down you go, down below, Jack
Where you never see the skies
And you’re working in a dungeon
For a pound a week rise
In nineteen and sixty, a few years ago
The mineworkers’ leaders to Lord Robens did go
Saying, “We work very hard, every day we risk our lives
And we ask you here and now for a pound a week rise”
Then up spoke Lord Robens, and he made this decree
“When the output rises then with you I will agree
To raise up all your wages, to give to you fair pay
For I was once a miner and I worked hard in my day”
So the miners they went home, they worked hard and well
With lungs full of coal dust in the bosom of hell
The output rose by fifteen, eighteen per cent and more
And when two years had passed and gone it rose above a score
Those miners, they went to get their hard-won prize
To ask Lord Robens for their pound a week rise
Robens wouldn’t give a pound, he wouldn’t give ten bob
He gave them seven-and-six and said, “Get back to your job”
So come all of you colliers, take heed what I say
Don’t believe the Coal Board when they says they’ll give fair pay
For they’ll tell you to work hard, to make the output rise
You’ll get Pie in the Sky instead of a one pound rise
