Here's my attempt at a transcription, via Spotify. It took me a while to figure out that "the charge at Agincourt" was not "the charge-attaching corps" so I suppose there could be other errors. I have marked a few that I consider doubtful.


ORDINARY COPPER
As sung by Ray Hearne on "The Radio Ballads: The Ballad of the Miners' Strike" (2011)

I am an ordinary copper as I always like to say.
I was brought up in this pit community.
Me father was a ripper, sipping(?) coal dust every day.
I know all about the miners' unity.
I can hear him telling both of us, my brother Tom and me:
"Don't do what your dad did; stay away from muck and grease.
Be a chauffeur, chef or carpenter, or concert secret'ry."
Well, I always thought I'd like to join t'police.

They bused us up to Walgreen(?) in the June of eighty-four.
First they stationed me at Junction Thirty-Three.
We were funneling the pickets through a bobby(?) corridor
Till we 'ad 'em where we wanted 'em to be.
Then they marched us in a column and they formed us into lines,
And me, I never doubted we were there to keep the peace.
With dogs and horses, batons, shields, and armoured to the nines,
That were never why I thought I'd join t'police.

And when they set the horses off and loosed the dogs of war,
And the riot squads were beating on their shields,
It were like another Zulu war, the charge at Agincourt,
As they ran amok across the Illey(?) fields.
I had to pull a giant of a Met bloke off a lad.
His eyes were big and bulging, his face a deep cerise.
He were truncheoning and battering just the same as he were mad.
That were never ever why I joined t'police.