Oct 6, 2025
Couldn't work out why I could never find a version of this with the last verse I remembered - it's because Pete Coe made it up, probably.
"There's no Byker Hill, no Walker Shore
The collier lads they are no more
It's been like this since '84
So farewell Elsie Marley"
(Byker Hill and Walker Shore being the names of two coal mines in Newcastle, and 1984 being the year of the miners' strike, a fight Thatcher picked on purpose to bring down the trade unions, and destroyed the economies of a lot of northern towns in the process.)
Like the folk (-punk) revival is nice, and the Longest Johns version is nice, but these are songs about people's history, and that's not preserved in amber after a certain point.
