(For the Big Meeting)
Brass ‘n’ silver! Brass to blow
away muck
From dusty throats, polished brass with
silver
Notes played to perfection. Keep in
step, mark
Time and count, everyone counts, so
each note
Achieves full value through
labour-power
Of lungs, working lungs, workers’
lungs, with skill
Always at their fingertips. According
To ability, according to need
For harmony.
Some of the seniors
Recall playing banners on the long
march
Back to the pitheads, banners high,
banners
Proud, banners truncheons could not
batter down,
Red banners emblazoned by golden words:
UNITY – BROTHERHOOD – LIBERTY –
PEACE
And SOCIALISM of course, inscribed
round
Likenesses of militant advocates,
Working class standards upheld.
This bold
Confluence of solidarity ebbs
And flows, wheels and winds along
venerable
Galleries of Durham’s thoroughfares.
Blow away those monsters that devour
Lives with too much relish, without
conscience.
Brass tacks required for nailing down
the truth,
Brass necks needed to demand sum total
Of silver and gold that’s the common
weal.
And still the bands play on, and still
banners
Billow with the breeze blowing in
across
Salted coalfields, and still there’s
a hundred
Thousand, more, gathering around the
Big
Meeting in defiance of those whose
minds
Are closed as the mines they’ve shut,
whose cold hearts
Are as black as the coal they’ve
sealed away
From posterity.
Beat the bass drum, boys,
Let the horns blare, steady with the
banner,
As Gresford echoes from the city’s
stones
And along the commercial facades while
Shop workers desert their counters and
tills
To stand and clap and cheer. Keep
marching girls
Having taken your full place in the
ranks,
Draw down Durham air and swell the
music,
Keep marching onwards all, don’t step
aside,
For history has not done with you yet.
Dave Alton
