Collier Laddie E-Book

Rab Wilson

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 155

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Forty years on from the 1984–85 UK Miners' Strike, the largest union-led industrial action in the 20th century, Rab Wilson – a former miner deeply entrenched in the strike – delivers a powerful narrative through his mining poems and strike diary, addressing contemporary social and economic issues in Scotland and the UK then and now. Having toiled in Scotland's mining industry for eight years, Rab provides an authentic voice that resonates with the struggles faced during the strike, vividly captured from his involvement between 12 March 1984 and 5 March 1985. This book serves as a testament to the working-class struggle, offering a unique perspective on the historical significance of Scotland's mining industry, skillfully expressed by a poet intimately connected to it. Rab Wilson emerges as an essential chronicler, ensuring the legacy of the miners' challenging strike endures in the pages of this evocative and timely work. Collier Laddie is an ode to resilience, solidarity and the enduring legacy of those who fought for justice during a pivotal moment in industrial history.

Leseprobe

RAB WILSON is one of Scotland’s most accomplished poets. He was born in New Cumnock, Ayrshire in 1960. After an engineering apprenticeship with the National Coal Board, he left the pits following the Miners’ Strike of 1984–85 to become a psychiatric nurse, spending the next 27 years in the nursing profession before becoming a front page whistleblower in the NHS after exposing a national scandal at NHS Ayrshire & Arran. He was widely lauded and praised in the press, TV and radio for his bravery in this action. He is still very much involved as an activist for social justice.

As a Scots poet, his work has appeared regularly in The Herald, Chapman, Lallans and Southlight magazines and he is the author of a number of highly praised volumes of poetry and a Burns scholar. Rab has performed his work at the Edinburgh Festival, the StAnza poetry festival at St Andrews, the Burns an a’ That Festival at Ayr and has been ‘Bard of the Festival’ at Wigtown, Scotland’s National Booktown. Rab is a previous winner of the McCash Poetry Prize and was ‘Robert Burns Writing Fellow – In Reading Scots’ for Dumfries and Galloway Region. He has worked with the artist Calum Colvin on a book of responses to Burns and has been Scriever-in-Residence for the National Trust for Scotland based at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway. Rab is currently Preses for the Scots Leid Associe/Scots Language Association. In 2023 he was one of the recipients of the Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun Award, Scotland’s highest public award for Arts & Humanities. He is a ‘weel-kent’ advocate for Scots language and writing. He lives in New Cumnock with his wife Margaret.

By the same author:

The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam in Scots, Luath Press, 2004

Accent o the Mind, Luath Press, 2006

Life Sentence, Luath Press, 2008

A Map for the Blind, Luath Press, 20011

Oor Big Braw Cosmos (with the late John C Brown, Astronomer Royal for Scotland), Luath Press, 2019

Burnsiana (with Calum Colvin), Luath Press, 2020

Zero Hours, Luath Press, 2020

First published 2024

ISBN: 978-1-80425-162-1

The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

Typeset in 10.5 point Sabon LT by

Main Point Books, Edinburgh

© Rab Wilson, 2024

This book is fondly dedicated to all the comrades I worked with at Barony Colliery, Auchinleck.

Contents

Introduction

Note

PROLOGUE

Here we go, here we go, here we go

PART 1: THE ENEMY WITHIN…?

Alex Shanks, Edinburgh

Billy Hodge, Cumnock

Jim Armitage, Fallin

Margaret Armitage, Fallin

Dave Maguire, Auchinleck

Alex McCallum, Fallin

Martha McCallum, Fallin

Helen Gray, Cumnock

Rab Gray, Cumnock

Yvonne Hodge, Cumnock

Danny Gemmel, Auchinleck

Archie Campbell, Kelty

Andrew Leys, Whitburn

Mick McGahey, Penicuik

Joe Owens, Blackburn

Jackie Aitchison, Dalkeith

Pat Rattray, Kelty

Billy McLean, Kelty

John McCormack, Fallin (i)

John McCormack, Fallin (ii)

John McCormack, Fallin (iii)

John McCormack, Fallin (iv)

John McCormack, Fallin (v)

Reprise: Big Wull

PART 2: COME ALL YE BOLD MINERS

The Coal

Avisyard Hill

Dalmellington Baun

Keir Hardie (1856–1915)

Lowsed

Memorials

Disaster

Triptych: ‘Maggie… Maggie… Maggie…’

i) The Lanely Daith o Maggie Thatcher

ii) Maggie’s Funeral

iii) Everything Must Go

PART 3: COLLIERY CRAMBO-CLINK

Note on ‘Frozen’

Frozen

Note on ‘The Wreck o the Auld Number Nine’

The Wreck o the Auld Number Nine

Note on ‘Jim Marr’s Disaster’

Jim Marr’s Disaster

PART 4: ‘FAIR FA’ MY COLLIER LADDIE!’

Labour

Vandals

Shairpnin’ Machine Picks

The Bagdad Café

Michty Wheels

The Great Stariski

Ghaists

The Auld Union Banner

PART 5: PIT OOT THE LAMP

Last Man Standing

The Lost Villages

Coalfields Regeneration Trust

Dumfries House

The Other Side of Town

The Deein o the Licht

The Gates at Barony Colliery

Geothermal

Note on ‘Geothermal’

Scots Glossary

Photo Credits

Introduction

TUCKED AWAY IN the loft of my house there is an old battered blue suitcase. I seldom look at this suitcase or pay any attention to it. It contains another life from long ago. Very occasionally, if I happen to be in the loft I might have a quick peek inside it, then close it again. It contains some old T-shirts, a pair of worn-out Levi jeans, patched and faded, with cloth sew-on badges with names of rock bands on them… from when I was a teenage Punk rocker. There’s a wooden cigar box, filled with stubs of concert tickets; The Clash; Siouxsie and the Banshees; Magazine; the Buzzcocks; David Bowie… and button badges bearing the names of such groups. But mostly, the case is filled with lots of old newspapers… bags of letters… curious ephemera and paperwork… and three A5 desk diaries that measure 5.8 x 8.3 inches… I was a child of the imperial system… the newspapers and letters pertain to an event that I took part in 40 years ago…

This book contains edited extracts from these diaries that I kept…

I want to tell you a story… but first of all, I need to set the scene…

When I was a young man, at the fag-end of the 1970s, I began an engineering apprenticeship in the Scottish coal mining industry, at Barony Colliery, East Ayrshire. The indentured apprenticeship agreement, on its formal legalese document, with National Coal Board green heraldic crest stamped at the top, states the date of commencement as 8 August 1977. I wasn’t really cut-out to be an engineer, but having no real plan in life, like many young men at the time, getting a ‘good trade’ was something parents greatly encouraged. I think I managed to fail most of the important exams the coal board and technical college devised for me… and in 1981, after five miserable attempts, also failed in my final exams. I was then allocated to menial work as a fitter’s mate, helping to maintain the heavy engineering equipment that allowed mine cars full of coal to be rammed off the winding cages, shunted round a short ‘railway’ type gravity system, emptied of their precious cargo onto gigantic conveyor belts, then in their circuitous route be returned back onto the winding cages, returned down the pit to be filled again and again in their interminable filling and emptying journey, supplying the country with vital coal and energy. It could at times be gruelling and dirty work maintaining this often dangerous machinery.

The upside of the job was the camaraderie, people you worked with, lifelong friendships made, and the sense of fun, carry-on, practical jokes and unique sense of humour that permeated the coal mining industry; humour as black as the seams of coal that were daily hewed. The ‘closeness’ of the human bond, formed over centuries, in mining communities.

This was my working life for almost ten years. I of course had a life outside the pit. I was the middle of three kids; my older brother Jim had already qualified as a mining engineer – he was, and still is, the model of a journeyman tradesman, highly skilled and technically gifted – my younger sister Laura trained as a nurse with the NHS, and now decades later, is a qualified Cognitive Behavioural Therapist – but I was the ‘difficult’ middle child! My family lived on a 10-acre smallholding, Polquhirter Nursery in New Cumnock, that my grandfather sweated to buy in the 1930s. Mum was an only child. She was brought up to take over and run the nursery – sent to London in the Coronation year of 1952 to train as a florist at the school ran by the great Constance Spry – she married my dad, a local musician, and they grew the business. They built 17 huge industrial greenhouses, filled with tomato plants, then later, flowers, and had a fruit & veg business… we had a lorry and one of the last horse & cart businesses in Ayrshire. Dad died when I was 21. Mum married my stepfather – whom I did not get on with. I helped out with the family business (as did my brother & sister) delivering flowers and arrangements for weddings & occasions, and wreaths for local funerals. We would take orders on the phone on Interflora from all round the world. The family were all quite musical… I was musical… my father resurrected the local silver band and I played solo cornet in it. I also played keyboards. I had great visions of being a pop star – like many delusional young people! Though I did play in many successful local ‘covers bands’, performing in the many pubs, hotels, working men’s clubs and miners clubs that existed all over the area. The family business thrived, local factories boomed, the pits brought in good wages and were the mainstay of all local industry and commerce… village life in Ayrshire revolved round the vast mining industry. Life was pretty good for working people.

Then, in 1984, we had the great Miners’ Strike.

 Just like the Martians in HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, plotting in secret to destroy the Earth, we also had deadly enemies plotting in secret in Downing Street to destroy the mining industry. And destroy it they did…

A long time after these events I became a well-published poet. Also, a long time after these events, I began to write poems that recorded and reflected on my time in the mining industry; some relating to the history of the industry; humorous ‘Tam o’Shanteresque’ narrative verse, recording events at work; the Miners’ Strike itself; and pre- and post-Strike mining/industrial related poetry. This book contains many of these writings and – 40 years after the events – my personal account of a national event that rocked the UK’s industrial fabric to its foundations. It’s a local reflection on national events. Thousands upon thousands of people will have their own memories, experiences and views of the Miners’ Strike and the mining way of life, but this book contains mine, as expressed through the prism of my poetry and diaries.

I have edited the diary extracts; there were many references in them to personal relationships, mundane family events and daily life, that I have mostly left out… it is mainly a record of how the Strike progressed, and its effects nationally and locally where I lived. Many, many people’s lives were changed irrevocably and forever due to the Strike. People died. People were killed.

The industry I spent the first ten years of my working life in was completely erased from the landscape. It exists now in books like this, or in museums. Odd physical traces of it remain; the huge Barony ‘A’ Frame winding headgear at Auchinleck, bestriding the earth like Ted Hughes giant ‘Iron Man’; the Newtongrange Mining Museum; the scars on hillsides and man-made lochans from abandoned opencast sites… fading into history… I left the mining industry on Friday 31 January 1986, and commenced training as a psychiatric staff nurse at the Crichton Royal Hospital, Dumfries, on Monday 3 February 1986. I could not afford to take a holiday or break between ending one career and starting another.

At the end of my shift on that last Friday in January I took off my worn, steel-capped pit boots, my old 1950s style corrugated miner’s helmet, carried them to the ‘dirt-hopper’ conveyor belt, dropped them onto it, and watched them slowly disappear into darkness… I then walked to the baths in my stocking soles, showered, boarded the pit bus, went home, and never went back to the pit again.

Rab Wilson

February 2024

Note

PART 1 CONSISTS of extracts from a daily diary kept by the author throughout the Miners’ Strike 1984–85. It also includes sonnets inspired by individuals who took part in the Strike, featured in Joe Owens’s book, Miners 1984–1994: A Decade of Endurance.

Parts 2 and 4 consist of poems written over many years – social and political musings relating to mining in Scotland.

Part 3 consists of humorous rhyming poems written in a style typical of poetry that used to be penned by many ordinary pit workers and rhymers. These poems were inspired by the Barony Colliery, Auchinleck, the people who worked there and events that took place.

Part 5 is a section of new poems examining the legacy of the Miners’ Strike and the effect it still has on former Scottish mining communities 40 years after the event.

Prologue

Here We Go, Here We Go, Here We Go…

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Ootside the baths we shuffled oor feet,

freezin fog happit ower the Horrals,

the pitheid lik an L.S. Lowry pentin,

else, some auld black an white Victorian photie.

Mairch; snell, cranreuch, bitin cauld,

haunds thrust deeply intae poackets,

bunnets pu’d doun ower oor lugs,

we waitit.

Forty or fifty men, piece bags slung,

towels rowed up, unner wir oxters,

braith expelled in cloods;

stirks in a slauchterhoose pen.

Then, the union guy appeared,

an stuid oan the wa, forenenst the canteen.

He tellt us fair an square the die wis cast,

the Yorkshire boys aareadies aa wir oot,

an syne the feck o us wid dae the same.

Some muttert aiths ablow their braith,

ithers stared at naethin.

The aulder heids amang thaim bowcht a bit,

they’d bin here afore; kent whit wis comin.

Across the caur-park twa-three craws

wir pickin at an empty paper pock.

Some young yins lauched an joked –

their een wid suin be opened.

Ah spake oot, an said it wid be folly,

but naebody peyed me ony mind.

An thon’s hou it stairts,

thon’s hou it ayeweys stairts.

PART ONE

The Enemy Within…?

Monday 30 January 1984

Monday morning again. Bobby England’s on dayshift with us this week. He has got his date to retire, in March I think? Soon there’ll be none of the old team left; old Harry Parker died last October; Hughie Ritchie retired last summer, and now Bobby…! The backshift’s tokens were all lifted at the Time Hall and all the miners went back home in sympathy with the men from E21 Face. I don’t know how this will affect us tomorrow on the day shift. This evening I watched a documentary about Scott Lithgow’s shipyard closing down, it reminded me of the pits… (4,000 men went home today, half the Scottish workforce, because of the Overtime Ban). This Government is bringing Scotland to its knees. In a few years I don’t think there’ll be much left up here.

Tuesday 31 January 1984

Arrived at work to find large crowd of workers assembled outside the pit baths. There must have been over a hundred men. The dispute had carried on from yesterday, and most of the miners (Group 1) all went back home. Myself, still being in the Tradesmen’s Union (Group 2) was able to attend my work. Out of about 400 men about 50 were working. Little Hughie Allan took a lot of stick because he worked (he is a Group 1 man). The 24-Hour Warning was put into effect, so I don’t know whether we will be working tomorrow or not.

Wednesday 8 February 1984

Surprisingly, we were all working at the colliery today. The coal cutting machine that had broken down was brought up to the surface, and anyone who was anyone was gathered round it to try and find out what had gone wrong with it. I’m not sure yet as to what was exactly wrong with it! Otherwise, quite a quiet day for me again. There was a pit-head meeting at 2:30pm. The Area Union Executive were there, and Neilly Valentine, the Group 2 delegate from Lugar, was there as well. They told the assembled crowd of miners (about 100 in all) that the Government was out to destroy the mining industry in Scotland, and that the pits that had been closed down were not really exhausted and that they had plentiful working reserves of coal left. Neilly Valentine then gave a rousing patriotic speech about this being a fight to save Scotland’s pits for our children, and so on… He warned us that we could be the next to go, along with Polmaise, Cardowan and Bogside ollieries… Scott Lithgow, Ravenscraig, Bathgate and numerous other firms who had went to the wall.

Monday 13 February, 1984

Routine day at work. Men from Killoch were picketing at Barony today. The men at Seafield Colliery have went on Strike calling for an all-out stoppage in Scotland. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to find out what course of action we’ll be taking.

Alex Shanks, Edinburgh

Ah wis oan Newcraighall Strike Committee

A single mither wi next tae zero

Gied us a fiver oot o her giro

Men gied us free beer fae Dryborough Brewery.

The right tae work, that wis aa that we asked

Demands which the Tories said went too faur

Fir tellys, holidays, mibbes a caur

Sae judges an lawyers taen us tae task.

Ah wis dragged through the courts, heavily fined

An haen nae previous wis nae defence

Fined twa hunner pound fir a first offence

Aa ah did wis staun oan a picket line.

Ah’ll nevvir forget it, it’s left its mark,

It festers there yet, somewhaur in the daurk.

Billy Hodge, Cumnock

Gaun doon the Pits wis an easy road oot

Ma faimily aa went sae ah went tae

Ah wis deeply involved wi the Strike, nae

Qualms, fir a year it wis ma main pursuit.

We went wir ain road an ah’m proud tae say

The hale community pued thegither

A band o comrades, cared fir each ither

We raised oor ain funds an peyed oor ain way.

Pits huv been the wey o life aroond here

Fowk wha owned pubs earnt money fae miners

Fowk wha hud shops earnt money fae miners

Noo we kin haurdly afford tae buy beer.

We’ll nevvir win back whit the Tories took

The future? This isnae the place tae look.

Monday 5 March, 1984