Remembering in song those who 'paid the price of coal'

THIS WEEK HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS FOCUSES ON ARTISTIC EFFORTS TO CAPTURE THE SELF-SACRIFICE OF MEN WHO WORKED IN NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE'S MINING INDUSTRY

- 

THE story of heavy industry in this area is a compelling one. For all that the employment it guaranteed has been replaced by jobs in betting centres and supermarkets. It’s as if the story has somehow got beneath the skin of local folk, just as surely as the coal dust penetrated the skin of my paternal grandfather, a Holditch Colliery miner whose death in 1982 was mainly the result of industrial diseases.

The story of North Staffordshire and its industrial heyday is one that people still wish to recognise, even though Etruria is no longer a salmagundi of throbbing, clanging, hooting iron and steel-making machinery and our last deep colliery - Silverdale - closed in 1998.

It is a point that is not lost on Tim Breward of DBm (UK) Stoke-on-Trent, a local songwriting team responsible for the anthem that was released this year in order to celebrate our rich industrial heritage as part of the city's centenary year.

The song - Coal, Iron and Clay, by Saggar Maker's Bottom Knocker - may be found on YouTube and contains references to Hanley, Shelton Bar and HG Wells (who was moved to write a short story inspired by the smoke, smuts and carmine skies over Etruria’s iron and steel works).

It fascinates me how music and verse has been so instrumental in describing the lives of the coalmining fraternity in particular.

I've been involved in the annual memorial services of two of North Staffordshire’s most notable disasters - Holditch Colliery at Chesterton (30 men killed, 1937) and Sneyd Colliery, Burslem (57 fatalities, 1942). Rhyme and song are utilised to mark both of these tragedies, with a poem called Heroes All always being read out with due gravitas by George Simms at the Holditch service. The final verse runs: