Pitwork, Politics & Poetry - The Songs & Poems Of A Durham Coalminer

Pitwork, Politics & Poetry was released in 1981 as a project to document the lived experiences and cultural heritage of the Durham coalfields. Created by Jock Purdon, a lifelong miner and songwriter, the album serves as a repository for the oral history of the region. Purdon collaborated with folk musicians Benny Graham, Jez Lowe, and Ged Foley to give these traditional and contemporary compositions a professional arrangement that preserved the gritty, authentic spirit of the working-class life he aimed to capture.

The album was self-released on a private label, reflecting the DIY ethos prevalent in the British folk revival of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The songs detail the struggle, camaraderie, and hardship of mining, providing a stark look at the socioeconomic climate of Northern England prior to the major miners' strikes of the mid-1980s. While not a commercial success, it is well-regarded among ethnomusicologists and folk historians as an essential, ground-level account of a vanishing industrial culture.