Harry Paterson

Tommy Smith turned fifty-two, the day they shut his pit,
Emphysema with his pay-off, the fuse had just been lit.
From the heady days of Saltley Gate and Orgreave in ’84,
Tommy Smith had done it all and then gone back for more.
The cave-ins and the danger, Tommy took them his stride,
A Wife, a house, three kids and a dog , he needed to provide.
And so his working life ground on until December ’92,
The day the headstocks stopped for good and Tommy was told “you’re
through”

A bit of this and a bit of that as he struggled to get by,
And something once so strong and proud began to slowly die.
The bills piled up, the giros shrank and the cupboards they slowly emptied,
The wife took off, the dog left too, and suicide had Tom tempted.
But still the best was yet to come, the doctor called him in,
“You’ve only got 3 months to live I’m sorry it’s a sin”
And then the mortgage man called round “you’ve piled up these arrears,
Even if you had a job, to pay it off would take you years”

“So sadly Mr Smith we have to take your house away”
And Tommy Smith wept tears of stone on that fateful, dreadful day.
The day he got out his twelve-bore, that years ago he’d put away,
And caught the bus into the town to make somebody pay.
A shopping centre carnage, the bodies numbered twenty,
A copper, some shoppers and some suits, now Tommy was running on empty.
When they finally shot him down at three in the afternoon,
Tommy gasped, took a breath and said “it couldn’t come too soon”