Poor Ode Joe

I knew Joe Brindley for only a few short years. I was but three or four years old when he taught me the Miner's Alphabet as I sat upon his knee, and I had barely entered my teens when he had gone forever.

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Yet, in that short space of time, I witnessed, in that one man, the very pinnacle of human achievement and the utter depths of human degradation.

In those early days of industrial upheaval which followed the First World War, Joe was the local miners' leader. Teetotaller, Sunday School teacher, the friend and confidante of the highest and the lowest in our locality. A sincere man with a persuasive voice.

Miners were seething with discontent and a sense of injustice.

He organised a series of meetings and Father took me with him to hear Joe address a gathering of colliers. My! How Joe could talk. His oratory stirred us all. We hung on his every word as he dsecribed how all of us poor people would have our lives transformed and made happier by Socialism.

The miners and their women folk cheered him to the echo. He was our champion, and with this new promise of prosperity ringing in our ears, we gave an overwhelming endorsement to his clarion call for an all-out strike.

But like so many strikes which had gone before, our miners were ill prepared for the trial of strength which followed.

The colliery owners sat tight, content to wait until starvation and mounting debts would force the men to surrender. So confident were they of ultimate victory that from the comfort of their large houses and from the depths of their bloated bellies, they issued an ultimatum to the strikers.

All themen could return to work immediately if they would accept a shilling a day less in pay.

And so the strike dragged on.