Brassed off

Subject: Brassed off
From: mauvepink
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 06:19 PM

I have just watched the film "Brassed Off" once again which starred the late, great Pete Postlethwaite. I still have tears in my eyes...

For the Man, for the Music, for the Miners and for the memories too

In some ways British Brass Band Music is an alternative kind of folk. The majority of bands that were successful and went on to inspire so many other brass bands all over, their history is deeply rooted in our industrial history and heritage.

Watching those men down the mines I cannot say I am sorry we no longer send men down underground to do such a dangerous job every day (though I know it is still occurring worldwide and not just for coal). To me their bravery in what they did is no less than the danger of being on a frontline somewhere defending your country. Both have led to great loss of life. There are parallels too in that many miners continued to lose their lives to illness related from their jobs long after they finished work. Soldiers too suffer this fate from various sources.

The communities that were split by the miner's strikes and the demise of the industry are still very much to be seen. Very different and some still carrying the wounds of the let downs they had when their pits, their livlihods and their lives were changed forever.

So... I just wanted to bring it up for attention, just in case anyone has forgot, just what the miner's did do daily for us (and still do in some countries).

Just the music and the memories remain... do let's keep them :-)

mp
T

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:07 PM

For the very best in living brass:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQkMGdljECk&feature=related

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: mauvepink
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:09 PM

Cannot do Youtubes so I will have to leave that sorry

mp

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: gnu
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:32 PM

Well said.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Zany Mouse
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:38 PM

We live in the former Yorks/Notts coalfield. In a lot of the villages hereabouts the old pit head wheel is buried half in the ground as a boundary mark. They are beautifully kept with flowers and plants at their base. Somehow they seem like headstones.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: mauvepink
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:58 PM

As I say... I have no wish to send men back underground, nor men to the front lines either. I know they were/are a part of life. Tonight I was reminded of it and just had to write something...

What a poignant landmark for the villages. Am glad the wheels were not scrapped. People should remember.

Thanks for your posts thus far :-)

mp

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Mark Ross
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 10:24 PM

Great film. Came out about the same time as The Full Monty, covering basically the same subject. Brassed Off was a much better film.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:01 AM

Many of the formative years of my childhood were spent in south-east Lancashire - I was born in Chorley and lived in Horwich for a time. Brass band music always evokes that time for me - days when we'd walk across the fields up to Rivington Pike, or roam the Chinese Gardens on the Lever estate, or build dams and swim in the river Douglas. Horwich, in those days, was a grimy, sooty little red-brick mill town - much changed these days.

Before my great-grandfather broke the tradition by becoming a locomotive driver on the railway, all the male members and male relatives of my father's line - and some women - were miners. My y g-g-g-grandfather was in the pit at 10, pulling "corves", or coal carts, graduating to a coal hewer when he was 16 or so. Child labour in mines was stopped by law in 1849.

I've got mixed feelings about the mines. The miners' strike broke communities and screwed up the lives of many thousands of hard-working folk - and yet, and yet, what a hard life it was.

The music's great though, andthe skill of the works musicians inthose days was astounding.

Subject: Lyr Add: COAL NOT DOLE (Kay Sutcliffe)
From: jeddy
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:08 AM

Coal Not Dole lyrics
By : Sutcliffe Kay

Coal Not Dole (Sutcliffe)

It stands so proud, the wheels so still,
A ghost-like figure on the hill.
It seems so strange, there is no sound,
Now there are no men underground.

What will become of this pit-yard,
Where men once trampled faces hard?
Tired and weary, their work done,
Never having seen the sun.

Will it become like sacred ground?
Foreign tourists gazing round.
Asking if men once worked here,
Way beneath this pit-head gear.

Empty trucks once filled with coal,
Lined up like men on the dole.
Will they e're be used again,
Or left for scrap just like the men?

There'll always be a happy hour
For those with money, jobs and power.
They'll never realise the hurt,
They cause to men they treat like dirt.

What will become of this pit-yard,
Where men once trampled faces hard?
Tired and weary, their work done,
Never having seen the sun.

There'll always be a happy hour
For those with money, jobs and power.
They'll never realise the hurt,
They do to them they treat like dirt



no mining thread is complete without this

take care all
x x x x x

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Captain Farrell
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:09 AM

I appeared in brassed off and had one or two scoops with Pete while waiting for filming.The work he put in on his conducting of the grimethorpe band made him look very plausible.He even invited some my fellow extras and me to have to lunch at the Piece Hall in Halifax.Great actor Great Man.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Alan Day
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:29 AM

A lovely film
I have recorded it to watch again.
Al

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: bradfordian
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:46 AM

Many of the Collieries also had male voice choirs as well as brass bands. I am a member of Bestwood Male Voice Choir which has its roots in the village colliery. Though the colliery closed many years ago, the choir is stil going strong as is the brass band called the BLACK DIAMONDS. The colliery winding head has been preserved and recently renovated. We also have several large coal fired power stations in the vicinity. It is very hard to imagine a life without coal. I believe the UK imports large amounts of coal from Europe where the hewing continues. Hopefully mechanisation is able to reduce the risk to mens lives, but as two recent events have shown, the risk is still as high as ever.

bradfordian

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: tritoneman
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 05:11 AM

An evocatie, revealing and great film. Of course coal mining is a hard and dangerous life but this hardness and the strength of the miners and their families seemed to, in themselves, create such strong, cohesive communities. The way that the film depicts the destruction of such a community in the name of economic 'liberalism' is heartbreaking. The music is superb, as is Pete Postlethwaite's performance. I agree with Mauvepink on her point that Brass Band music is a deeply engrained part of our culture and, as such, is folk music.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: mauvepink
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 05:40 AM

Will... it seems I may have inadvertently and ignorantly been quite sexist in this thread. I knew that women worked at the mines - some doing really hard - but I had no idea at all they actually went DOWN the mines. For some reason in my head I had imagined they would never be allowed down the mine in later years at least (though we had no compunction of sending children down earlier in our history). Now we have women at the front line too. You opned my eyes to a piece of herstory I had no idea about. Thanks. For some reason the Lancashire coalpit regeneration areas seem to have faired far better than some of the Yorkshire/Nottinghamshire and Welsh ones ones. Maybe because they were spread in a smaller space. Perhaps because Lancashire had other heavy industries close by that survived better? I have no idea. Maybe it's my imagination. Pain is pain in any county

Jeddy.. great poem!

Keep the comments and memories coming. I am glad I was not alone in feeling as I did about the whole thing last evening

mp

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: alanabit
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 05:52 AM

It is a great film. I drove buses up in Chesterfield for about a year from 1980-81, just as the mining age was coming to an end. Part of my job was to drive miners to and from work. A miners' bus was always very quiet on the way in and very noisy on the way home. The productivity targets were displayed outside the pits and the miners beat them week after week. The tragedy was that even then the mines were heavily subsidised and uneconomic. I saw some of the miners' strike first hand and played at a rally at which Tony Benn spoke. I still have very mixed feelings about it all. Like mauvepink I do not want to see men sent down holes full of carcinogenic filth again - especially when it is not economically viable. On the other hand, the ruthless destruction of a way of life before anything had been put in place to replace it was simply callous.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: doc.tom
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 06:20 AM

"Came out about the same time as The Full Monty, covering basically the same subject."

It came out before Full Monty - Full Monty was an attempt to try and 'capture' the sucess of Brassed Off - it was far more hyped and consequently became better known. I agree that "Brassed Off was a much better film" it wasn't tamed for a wider market as Full Monty was.

Got Brassed Off on DVD as soon as it came out - still watch it. Ah, Thatcher's legacy! - and here we go again?

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: fat B****rd
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 06:29 AM

Great film ! I've had it on DVD for some time and will be watching it again very soon.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Tootler away
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 06:56 AM

Mauvepink

Look up the song "Testimony of Patience Kershaw". It is based on the actual testimony of a young woman working down a pit in Yorkshire in the mid 19th century before the commission that led to the 1849 act. Can't provide a link just. now I'm away from my computer & typing this on my mobile phone

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: jacqui.c
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 07:10 AM

The Testimony Of Patience Kershaw

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Gail
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 07:11 AM

A documentary on TV recently showed that after making 'Brassed Off', Pete Postlethwaite maintained his link with Grimethorpe Colliery Band to the extent that he occasionally did a 'guest spot' conducting the band. For some reason that really touched me.

As for the miners' strike, our household had very mixed feelings. Dad was a lifelong union man, a shop steward who worked on the canals hauling coal from the pits to the ports for export. When the miners went on long-term strike, dad's work came to an abrupt end and he was laid off without pay. Not being a miner, he didn't get any strike pay either. He sympathised with the miners but was a powerless victim of their strike.

Anyway, I'd fully agree that in those pit villages brass bands were a kind of folk process; men whose education and economic background were often limited nevertheless learned to read music and play instruments in real contrast to their daily working conditions.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,BBP at work
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 07:17 AM

Coal mining in the UK is not completely dead yet - Kellingley, Thoresby and Daw Mill mines still active, Welbeck on the run down but Harworth may be reopened, Hatfield also still coaling. Unity in Wales also doing well.

I work for a company that supplies ventilation ducting and gas detection equipment to them all, plus other mines in the UK and beyond.

Each time I hear of another mining disaster, I sing Jez Lowe's "Weave and Worry" for the wives.

I first watched Brassed Off at the local cinema, not long after moving to the area. The reaction of the audience was heartfelt as they had lived through the strikes and I found it quite intimidating at first.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,BBP again
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 07:19 AM

I forgot to mention that the company I work for sponsors Grimethorpe Colliery Band and I promoted a concert given by Thoresby Colliery Band in 2009. Still lots of local support for these great bands.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: JennyO
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 08:16 AM

I saw it when it first came out and liked it. Rob hasn't seen it yet. Fortunately I spotted it on the program and we recorded it, probably to watch tonight. Nice to see a thread about it!

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Alan Day
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 08:19 AM

Running parallel to these bands were the Concertina Bands heavily represented in the Manchester area. Mainly playing from Brass Band music dots , taking part in the yearly competitions at Belle Vue Manchester and Crystal Palace. The World Champions were mostly "Ashton under Lyne and the runners up Heywood approx 1900- 1935
A wonderful full sound.
Al

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 08:20 AM

I too thought Pete's performance in Brassed Off was superb. He always struck me as the sort of chap who would have fitted very well in the old Cottesloe company at the National Theatre (the Mysteries era). If he hadn't been at the Liverpool Everyman at the time that is!

I was torn by the miners' strike at the time. I come from Nottingham and of course the Notts NUM was mostly against the strike. You can't blame them - a lot of the miners were from the North East and had already been uprooted once by pit closures. Not that opposing the strike helped them in the long run! On the other hand I hated the sight of hordes of Plods harassing chaps in cars on M1 slip roads,and as for Orgreave, well.....

Bradfordian reminds me that somewhere I have some Kodachrome slides of Bestwood Colliery when it was still operational. Must have been around 1970 I and another guy went to photograph the steam loco "Felix" there. Plenty of coal dust to wipe off the camera afterwards. Must find em and scan em.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 08:30 AM

mauvepink, of course you weren't being sexist. It's a little known fact (I think) that men, women and children in the early 19th century worked virtually naked down the pits - which, as you might imagine - created a less than salubrious environment...

If you go to the area where the Lancashire coalfields worked in by my ancestors used to be - around Blackrod, Haigh, Arley, etc., all close to the Liverpool/Lancaster canal - you'll see little sign of the pits, slag heaps, railway lines, ditches and general industrial landscape. All green fields now. Oddly enough, the row of miner's cottages at Red Rock - where my g-g-g-grandfather lived in the 1840s and 1850s - is still there, right by the canal bank. And very sweet it all looks these days!

Last year I had the opportunity to photograph the rate books for the Haigh district - including the data for the cottages where my family lived. They were always a couple of shillings in arrears. What was an eye-opener was how the whole district - cottages, farms, mills, fields - was all owned by the Earl of Balcarres. 'Twas ever thus.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 10:00 AM

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned that Brassed Off also featured that inveterate folkie Bernard Wrigley - he wouldn't be masquerading as "GUEST, Captain Farrell" by any chance, would he?

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: mauvepink
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 11:39 AM

Thanks Tootler and jacqui... touching to say the least. I cannot youtube but I see it is on youtube to.

BBP at work... thanks too for reminding us of those that still go down underground. I have done a small gig for our service users today and sung "Working Man" - written by the Canadian Rita McNeil of course - as a tribute to all the miners still alive in the area. It went down well and allowed me to mention last evening's film too.

I think some Morris Dancers have their roots in mining as well. Folk is certainly well attached to the industry and it's nice to see others agree that Brass Band music is part of our folk heritage too.

Will, I know those cottages and canalside very well. The canal past Red Rocks towpath has lots of evidence of slag waste. Mining distasters were not a stranger in Lancashire either. I nursed a patient once who was involved in the Maypole disaster and actually remember the Golborne losses.

Please. It's an open forum. Do feel free to post links to pictures or any history to do with mining in the UK. This is a good way of remembering those brave men - most of who would never say they were brave and were just doing a job - who spent their lives down't pit.

Strikes and militancy aside. They were betrayed and beaten to submission before finally being killed off. I dare say many got rich on the back of it but none would have been miners. I never truly appreciated back then what these men and women did for us...

Charley Prides sings a song that has the lines in it "And these hard times will be the closest times we've known". How true in many a way

Please keep your thoughts, recollections and opinions coming :-)

mp

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 12:52 PM

I live in a village which until 2005 had faceworkers from nearby Ellington - the last deep pit in the NE to close.
Opposite me lives one of them - 3 weeks before it closed he was 5 miles out under the N. Sea when a tub broke loose and ran over him. He lost one leg, and nearly the other too.
He used to be a runner. It took him a year or so, but he's back driving now, and seeing to his grandchildren, with hardly a word of complaint.

The men said they could have pumped Ellington out in 3 shifts, but the water was used as an excuse to finish it.

Some have gone to NZ, some are "sunshine miners" working in the open casts, but most are "finished" as they put it. They've found other things to do, or not.

A radiologist friend in the local hospital said you never asked an injured miner to move to get X-rays: however hurt they were they would always try and move to help the staff rather than be lifted.

I saw the last bit of Brassed Off last night: I've watched it several times. I guess it didn't get into the big-time because of that magnificent speech at the end. Too political, too controversial.

Paws

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,SteveG
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 01:49 PM

Yes a brilliant film with some brilliant performances. One way mining and its struggles will be remembered is through the many wonderful songs written about it. Some of them can be found on the Yorkshire Garland website at www.yorkshirefolksong.net

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: JohnB
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 12:37 AM

We used to go to the Brass Band Contests on Whit Friday many years ago before moving to Canada.
That's the part in Brassed Off where they all get out of the coach to have a pee.
All the GREAT Bands were there Black Dyke, Fairey Fodens, CWS Footwear etc.
Nothing could compare though to the local Village Band playing last in their own Village, like Delph, Dobcross, Upermill etc.
What a great event that was, I guess it still continues, hope so.
Great movie too.
JohnB

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 01:52 AM

I always liked Brass Band music. The ABC (Aust) radio had a regular session on about nearly midday for a while in the 1970s, too.

My father's father had been a hauler/carrier in the horse and cart days before trucks - a hard life too. He was in brass bands (no I don't know what the punishment was for - sorry!) and had played various instruments. When I first remember him, he was playing the tuba/euphonium.

He said he took it up so he could get a seat on the trams. He would drop it on someone's toes, and when when they stood up, he would say thanks, and slip into their seat... he did have a sense of humour...

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 02:52 AM

Mining disasters were not a stranger in Lancashire either.

Too right! One of the worst disasters in Britain was at the Pretoria Pit in Westhoughton in 1910. There was a huge explosion on 21st December, with 344 killed. My great-grandfather's brother-in-law - one James Hurst - was killed, together with other relations.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 03:02 AM

My friends used to collect money for striking miners in Nottingham, a lot of people were very generous, nothing about those days was as clear cut as is depicted. My favourite memory of Brassed Off was Gloria in XL (Tara Fitzgerald) showing the men how 'orange juice' should be played. Brass bands sound like folk music to me.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 03:25 AM

Hi Mauvepink

Don't forget that song I sing of Peter Bond's - "Act of God" - about girls and boys being down the Huskar Colliery at Silkstone in 1838 and being drowned when they were told to get out when it started raining heavily. Had they stayed where they were they would have been alive today - they'd be 197 years old mind!

All the details HERE

Cheers
Mark

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 03:32 AM

Here Alanabit.

That rally, was it at Clowne? There were a few of us playing as I recall. My set was sandwiched between David Bookbinder and Dennis Skinner.

The bit that made me laugh was that I appeared to be the only striking miner "on the bill." Lots of platitudes by well meaning people, but not a time I look back on whistfully. Bad people on all sides and the rest of us stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Since those times, I have become a dirty rotten stinking capitalist. On balance, I prefer my life now, thanks.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 06:56 AM

Brass band music is something I had never really appreciated when I was young until I watched Brassed Off years later. The sound and the solidarity between the band members and community was very moving.   A thought should be given to the miners who suffered killer lung diseases too, another tragic side to mining.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,andyval
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 08:23 AM

Saw 'Brassed Off' at Penistone cinema when it came out and when the film finished everyone stood up and applauded. Very moving.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: bradfordian
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 08:38 AM

I went to Saddleworth and surrounding villages last Whit Friday for the Brass band competitions. It was a sunny day. I'd been meaning to go for many years (coming from the home town of BLACK DYKE). It was fabulous and very moving seeing the Bands marching and playing as they went to line up for the performance arena where the judges listen behind curtained windows ass they are not allowed to see the bands. the area is full of the bands coaches and in some cases, the judges are still judging at midnight if not even later. although there are fewer bands around these days, there is still plenty of interest and enthusiasm. It's lovely to see many youngsters involved.

bradfordian

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 10:02 AM

Women and kids worked in the salt mines in Droitwich, there is a statue with a man in his mining kit a bare breatd woman and a child so I guess the colliers weren't the only ones who had to put up with near slavery.

Great Statue and it always raises eyebrows when people who have never seen it before pass by.

Good spot for busking too.

:)

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Brian May
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 01:15 PM

Living in Doncaster, the memories of this time are still stark.

A wonderful film by a stunning cast - just look at what they've done since.

Great music. We go up to Brodsworth Hall on summer Sundays and listen to brass bands that are wonderful - it's very evocative.

Pete Postlethwaite will be missed, what a great character actor he was.

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: Colin Randall
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 02:54 PM

A few years ago, I interviewed Melanie Hill, who played - as it were - Mrs Coco the Scab, for a Sunderland football site I run (she's from there originally), and this passage from the resulting article deals with that great speech in Brassed Off:

" Virtually the whole cast, Melanie recalls, was in tears when Peter Postlethwaite recorded, in one take, that thundering speech in the Royal Albert Hall after rising from his sick bed to lead the doomed colliery's brass band to victory in a national competition."

Though, as mentioned in the piece, a friend of mine with impeccable North-eastern credentials, and mining in the family, has always thought the film grossly sentimental and manipulative. I disagree: it is one of the few films I could watch over and again (and do).

Subject: RE: Brassed off
From: GUEST,mauvepink
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 07:59 PM

Thanks for more posts...

Mark: that song always gets to me and you sing it as well as you introduce it. Brilliantly! It is a touching song for sure. And for my next request.... ;-)

Really enjoying all your posts. It was worth starting the thread for sure.

mp