With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt / the blackleg miner goes to work

Coalminers in the vicinity of Newcastle (north of England) starting a midnight-8 am shift around 1939.

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Blackleg Miner

English traditional song, early 19th century
arranged and performed by Richard Thompson
Appears on "1000 Years of Popular Music" (2003)

It's in the evening after dark
when the blackleg miner creeps to work,
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt,
There goes the blackleg miner.

Well, he grabs his duds and down he goes,
To hew the coal that lies below,
There's not a woman in this town row
will look at the blackleg miner.

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place,
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a footrace
to catch the blackleg miner.

And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner.

They grabbed his duds, his picks as well,
And they hoy them down the pit of hell,
Down you go, we pay you well,
You dirty blackleg miner.

It's in the evening after dark
that the blackleg miner creeps to work,
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt,
There goes the blackleg miner.

So join the union while you may,
Don't wait 'til your dying day
For that may not be far away,
You dirty blackleg miner

Popular with folk revivalists, a song from the Durham coalfields, of North East England, of indeterminate age - Deleva and Segal Mines both saw industrial action (strikes) on many occasions. Blackleg being British for "Scab." A bitter song and a warning about what happens to strikebreakers. The pits at seaton delaval and Seghill are metioned, both about 60 miles north of Newcastle on Tyne. They were closed in the 1960s.

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Blackleg Miner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blackleg Miner is a 19th Century English folk song, originally from Northumberland (as can be deduced from the dialect in the song and the references in it to the villages of Seghill and Seaton Delaval).

It is not entirely clear how old the song is, although it is thought to have been written either in the late 19th or early 20th Century. Richard Thompson, who released a version of it in 2006, dates it as early as the first half of the 19th Century. However, if this was true, it must have been translated into more modern English, as the lyrics would not have been part of the language of 19th Century Northumberland.

The lyrics, which are traditional depict the aggressive stance against strikebreakers adopted by collectivised strikers - the term blackleg being an older word for scab. (Britain's mining sector has always been heavily unionised and strikes could cause bitterness both within and between pit communities).

For a period in the 1960s and 1970s, the song's aggressive lyrics were ignored and it became a common feature of many folk music societies. However, the UK miners' strike (1984-1985) saw striking miners using the song to intimidate those who continued to work.

Thereafter, playing the song became a political statement in support of the strike and many folk clubs avoided the song due to its description of violence. This was counterbalanced by an increase in bands that played the song. The most notorious of these was that by Steeleye Span, who played the song in Nottingham - an area that had seen a lot of violence during the strike - in 1986.

Other artists to have played this song include Ryan's Fancy, Lloyd, Smoky Finish and Clatterbone, Len Wallace, Seven Nations, Steeleye Span, the Angelic Upstarts as well as Richard Thompson.

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A scab is a worker who crosses a strikers' picket line to take a union member's job and keep working. Scabs often were/are men who, for various reasons -- criminal records, illegal aliens, etc. -- could not get into a union during normal times and so could not get work. A long, protracted strike opens doors of work opportunity for previously unemployable scabs. Scabs work cheap for cash by the day and enjoy no protections or benefits earned by decades of union struggle.