John Thorpe - Little Moscow

I was born in a northern mining town
At the turn of the century
By the time I was twelve
Me childhood days were history
One cold December day
I rose before the dawn
And I joined the men on their way to work
With me pit boots on
Well I walked beside me fatha
And I listened to the crack
And I watched the wheel at the pit-head turn
To bring the night shift back
Here I was, a collier lad
With me comrades all around
We walked with single purpose
Destination underground

I remember it all clearly now
Like watching an old dream
Working with the hewers
In the cavil on the brockwell seam
We depended on each other
And the town it had great soul
But all the bosses cared about
Was the rising price of coal
Our hardships and our heartaches
Met cold indifference
The company owned us, one and all
When the piper played we danced
But the winds of change were blowing
The storm clouds gathering
A new day it was dawning
And the tide was on the turn

Then Kitchener he called us to war
In nineteen and fourteen
In their patriotic fervour
Many rushed to volunteer
They marched away to god knows where
To the playing of the town brass band
To fight for king and country
In a distant, foreign land
They gave their lives at Passchendale
At Verdun and the Somme
By the time the war was over
The flower of their youth was gone
All around the town we heard
The sombre church bell chimes
And the death march played in Derwent Street
At leased two hundred times

Then the men who dug the trenches
They came back to digging coal
And a land that's fit for heroes
Or at least that's what they were told
Instead came the depression
And they lost all they had won
Demands were made for profits' sake
But to no man we'd bow down
So they locked us out and tried to break
The spirit of our cause
They thought they'd bring us to our knees
With their blacklegs and their laws
And looking back I still believe
When all is said and done
We had to fight for what was right
For our daughters and our sons

They called us Little Moscow
And they damned us all to hell
The reddest village in England
Where precocious Lenin's dwell
But we fought against injustice
And inequality
And the feelings that surrounded us of
What must be must be
They called us Little Moscow
They forgot the sacrifice
Of the men who died and the women who cried
Themselves to sleep at night
They called us Little Moscow
They just didn't understand
What was in the hearts of the men who fell
In the horrors of no-mans' land

Written by:
John Thorpe

Publisher:
Lyrics © O/B/O DistroKid

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