On Thursday 26th January, the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers hosted a book launch. The publication, "Still the Sea Rolls On", has been compiled and edited by Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon. The sub-title, "The Hartley Pit Calamity of 1862", explains why the Institute’s Neville Hall was such an appropriate venue.
The book explores the history of the tragedy and marks its 150th anniversary with poems, photographs and illustrations. The poems range from Joseph Skipsey’s, "The Hartley Calamity" written and read by him to raise funds for the bereaved families, to reflections written by poets of today.
With the disappearance of coal mining none of today’s writers have direct experience of the industry, although many can claim close family connections. My own father worked down the pit on the South Yorkshire coalfield during World War 2 as a Bevan Boy.
So this was no academic historical exercise for the contributors, and a common theme of the evening was community. Rather than that artificial construct, "The Big Society", the Hartley Calamity was a true expression of people coming together for mutual aid and support. The socialism of disaster, the best of people brought out by the worst of circumstances, rather than the social disaster presently being perpetrated by the Coalition government.
The book is itself the product of collaboration, as was the evening that launched it. A well informed and informative lecture on The Hartley Disaster preceded the well attended reading. The evening was enlivened by an eclectic mix of songs accompanied by both acoustic and electric guitars, along with the soulful music of the Northumbrian pipes.
Overall, this was a fitting tribute and memorial, even down to the day of the week. As Joseph Skipsey wrote:
"Twas on the Thursday morning, on
"Twas on the Thursday morning, on
The first month of the year,
When there befell the thing that well
May rend the heart to hear."
Dave Alton
