Gresford: the lasting contribution of a Durham miner
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
The North's mines may have gone, the numbers of miners may be dwindling, but the Durham Miners' Gala lives on.
Thousands again flocked to the city at the weekend.
Now I have heard tell a few of those visitors do see it as a reason to have a drink or six.
But many do go for the ceremony, the colour and the part it plays in the North East's heritage.
And I'm sure some will have reflected on the poignancy of an event that has outlasted the industry it celebrates.
The moment to do that might be during a performance of Gresford, or the Miner's Hymn as it's become known.
I confess I knew little about Gresford and its history until I read a book that has recently been published.
Tony Benn has described Peter Crookston's "The Pitmen's Requiem" as a very remarkable book, and I'd tend to agree.
The history of mining may be well-trodden territory, but this reflective, moving and intelligent book matches the mood of the hymn it celebrates.
At the outset Peter intended to write a biography of Robert Saint, the Durham pitman who wrote Gresford.
He met him as a child, and he came from the same North East town of Hebburn.
Saint wrote Gresford in the 1930s to commemorate a truly terrible mining massacre in Wales.
Two hundred and sixty six men lost their lives at Gresford Pit, 200 of the bodies could never be recovered.
But music that was written as a memorial to one disaster has become so much more.
It has been adopted as the "miner's hymn" and played at pit closures and pitmen's funerals throughout the region.
And a bit like Gresford, "The Pitmen's Requiem" may have started focusing on one subject but has ended up as an elegy to a whole way of life that has now disappeared.
Just as you can appreciate the emotional punch of Gresford without ever having been in a pit (Tony Benn chose it as one of his Desert Island Discs for the reasons you can see in the video below), so you can appreciate Peter Crookston's book even if you've never lived in a mining community.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
It may also make more people remember Robert Saint. There are no plaques or memorials in Hebburn. The flat where he composed Gresford is sited anonymously above a chip shop.
But perhaps the greatest testament to the man lies around the corner in a development of retired miners' cottages. Saint donated the royalties from Gresford to the NUM, who then built the homes.
If you want to see more on Gresford and Peter Crookston's book, you can watch Look North on Tuesday evening at 6.30pm.
I'm Richard Moss, the BBC's Political Editor for the North East and Cumbria. Welcome to my irreverent - but hopefully insightful - northern take on reporting politics for Look North and the Politics Show.
© 2012~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~10~RS~)
Comments
Sign in or register to comment.
Dear Richard,
Thank you for a really thoughtful piece. As I live in Scotland, I was not able to see the programme.
Did you prompt/make this morning's 'Today' piece? As good as any 'Thought for the Day'
As a former SOP producer, I have been going to the Durham Gala for a few years - it is badly under-promoted, so have been trying to get an SOP about it. Standing in the street, where the bands and banners wait for their turn to salute Dennis Skinner et al, Gresford is often played. The whole crowd falls silent at the first note. It is played in the dedication of Banners Service in the Cathedral too; a most emotional event. You have pulled together a story that should never be forgotten.
I was never a miner, but the BBC work took me down enough to understand comradeship in adversity, and sadly my forbears include the only mine manager killed in an accident. It was for a pathetic reason- the long overcoat he was wearing dragged him in to the mine machinery - before H and S! Nothing to be proud of, but I feel an affinity and have been to Gresford. In the 1960's I worked on a film in South Wales with people who remembered the strikes, the food kitchens and the barbaric mine proceedures like bringing the dead back to the house to break the news.
Thanks for bringing this to the world - what is the latest problem? How could any video be made without Gresford?
Complain about this comment
Hello Andrew,
Thanks for that. I didn't have anything to do with the Today piece, and I didn't catch it unfortunately. What was it about?
I think you're right that it is people's connections to the mining past that will keep the memories, Gala, and music like Gresford alive.
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS