Our Old Lady

our Old Lady
brick upon brick, blood sweat and mortar
born of graft of men who would slaughter
a pint of your ale with their pay..
Harworth Miners Institute.
The Black God called you,
and you never faultered
in your candid honesty..
1924..is the year we cut coal
although the embilishment
on your face said 1922..?
You have a shadow in the past..
and 'trading with the enemy'
was not your forte..
1922 would be the date the 
British Government sold the 
enterprise at HARWORTH to
Barber and Walker,Co
after seizing all the Assets
of the Continental Company..
It brought a new act in Parliament
Herr Hugo Stinnes and his foreign
legion were imprisoned ..and 
the tap never started...
it took years after the War,
and the depression..
for coal to  give you birth
..with the subscriptions
from miners to build facilities
for miners and their families..
But strikes and unions business
made you weaken..
when Spencerism brought out
the devil in the ditch ..
Do you work for your family ?
Do you work for the company ?
and the year was 1926..
Barber and Walker. Co.  Coal Mining
favoured a 'NEW' union..
George Spencer..who had caused
a ground breaking dispute..
at Harworth Colliery in the Nottinghamshire
~Colliery field, by attempting to remove the
Nottinghamshire Miners Assosiation
our of the Miners Federation Political fund.
he invented his union 'Spencerism'...
and his 'union' was a Lock out at
the colliery gates..similar to a lock in
only those in Spencers' Union
were allowed to work..
it was, the general strike in uk
and people were starving..
men were forced to go to work
to feed their crying babies...
wrenched from principles..
for less money,,for longer hours
the aim of the general strike
was to force the government to act 
to stop mine owners lowering
miners pay, and make them work
extra hours ..taking
 food out of babies mouths..
Spencerism is also the survival
of the fittist...as Charles Darwin
Theory....but it didn't work
they were amalgamated..
and the National Union of Mineworkers
were formed from this event.
however, a year later..
the Priminister brought about
The Trades Unions Dispute Act
which prevented by law,
sympathy strikes..it was repealed
in 1946..but Margaret Thatcher
brought it back..in the eighties..
she killed /neuted the Unions..
so we went to The Insitute
and drank away our cares..
In the fat years..we had fun
but the years of Thatcher
saw to that..the boss won..
and the way of things..
with the colliery closing
and no coal industry other than
 a hand full of mines open cast..
our ladies Kingdom was all but done..
and it seems now like..
some holy sacrifice ..one night
the flames licked at your soul
and you died like we do..
so when I pass these days
I don't see little boxes made out
of ticky tacky..
I see 'the Stute'...
.three men wide at the bar..demanding..
commitee men emptying the bandits..
Capstan full strength and double diamond,
pie and peas..dominoes clacking..
Charlie stopping somebody's tap..
camaradarie..a band of men...
and I smile for our Old Lady..