Songs such as this are about capturing an event in terms other than soundbite media. In essence that is what folk music is all about. (Back in 1980 ish, Dave Burland sang the Boomtown Rats song, "I don't like Mondays" saying it is an excellent folk song.)

Interesting that when I started going to folk clubs, I was fascinated to hear fellow miners singing about the hardships on the trawling fleet, or steelworkers lamenting the public health issues of chemical works. I decided that it was obviously poor form to sing about your own industry, so avoided mining songs. A pity, because in the BBC radio ballad "The big hewer" McColl gave us some wonderful material.

The person who more than anybody got me into going to folk clubs was my late friend Bob Walker. Bob ran the Boundary folk club in Worksop and perhaps had a somewhat tenuous link to the ballad of Springhill. He was an actor touring in rep in Canada at the time and was appearing a few miles down the road when it all happened. He felt the song echoed the sentiments locally as far as he could see them and that got him interested in the power of song to convey a thought.