The Last Laugh

by Peter Crasterfarian Angus

The following poem was written in 1990, reflecting on mass layoffs at Swan Hunters and Margaret Thatcher’s intransigence in face of Britain’s decline as an industrial power.

Author’s note: “Swans had just paid off a load of lads and I was driving past (looking at Segedunum) and they were all coming out after their last shifts.”

See lightning strike on skeletal hulks 
Heads bowed and shrouded like medieval monks 
They clad the ships with skins of steel 
From top, the gun-whale, to the keel 
The wheels turn round to winch the cage 
To seams of black rocks of great age 
They hew the coal with bear like hands 
Many miles beneath these lands 
A shower of sparks sprays the floor 
They forge the steel smelted from ore 
Into the three high mill it’s rolled 
To forge the plates of hot and cold 

So Mrs Thatcher what do we do? 
To earn our crust to pay our due 
The wolf is growling at our back door 
And we’ve no scraps to feed him any more 
All whipped away on a tyrant’s whim 
For standing up for ourselves when times looked grim 
Our union cards are all but dead 
And not much use at buying bread 
So Mrs Thatcher what do we do? 
You’ve built business parks, more than a few 
Many buildings empty still 
By the time they’re full there’ll be no skill 

So when you need to re-build your fleet 
From fighting the Saddams of the East 
You’ll look once more unto the Tyne 
To build your ships of steel so fine 
But those still here won’t have the skill 
The one that Thatcherism killed 
It went to ground with those fine men 
That lay in the graveyard ten by ten 
So who’ll have the last laugh on this page 
Those who worked in that fine age 
Of coal and ships and steel works too 
Hammered by the Tories blue

Penbal 1 – Lee Stoneman

No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.