This is the note to the song for Ewan's song book - The Essential Ewan MacColl.
The collection was published posthumously - I seem to remember that Jack Hamilton was actually from Sligo and not Clare - could be wrong.
Jim Carroll

THE DRIVER'S SONG
(1958, SONG OF A ROAD)
The army of pick-and-shovel slingers who built the railway and canal systems in the nineteenth century were known as navigators, or navvies. They are still to be found in almost every branch of civil engineering, though for the most part the hand tools have given way to the bulldozer and the giant Euclids and RBs (Ruston Bucyrus).
This song is a tribute to Jack Hamilton, a "dozer" driver from County Clare, Eire, who told us:
"Some people say to me, "You're a very small man to be driving such a big machine." But you don't have to be a big man to drive these at all. As small a man as you could drive these things! It's only once you get used to the scraper and the dozer blade and the winch and these levers here . . . [There was a forest of levers!] anyone could drive this . . . even a lady. . . ."