“HERE we go, here we go for the women of the working class!”

Chesterfield Parish Church — The Crooked Spire — rang out with this anthem from the ’84-85 Miners Strike on the evening of Saturday October 12.

The occasion was the inaugural performance of A Northern Requiem, written by local teacher and musician Jonathan Francis. Over 300 people were in the audience. Francis wrote it to commemorate the strike and the communities “who were left to fend for themselves when everything they knew had collapsed.”

The spark that led to the creation of the requiem was when Francis was shocked to find that local sixth formers “had no knowledge of a life-changing event that happened on their doorsteps only 25 years before.” They asked: “Coal? Is that what you barbecue with?”

Also in the church was an exhibition about the strike, created by Colin Hampton and the Chesterfield Unemployed Workers Centre, which filled the Assembly Rooms in Chesterfield last spring and toured the surrounding villages.

Francis’s glorious music was performed by the 65-strong Rose Choir, Harlequin Brass and accomplished soloists Louise Collett, mezzo-soprano and vocal coach for the Rose Choir, and Morven Bryce, violinist. 

The requiem is a unique setting of extracts from the Latin Mass, moving poems from the mining communities sung by Collett and the choir and songs from the strike.

These included “Here we Go! Here We Go for the Women of the Working Class,” written by singer and songwriter Mal Finch from a nearby village in the Peak District.

The song was inspired by a conversation Finch had with Betty Heathfield, one of the founders of Women Against Pit Closures.

Finch says her group Flamin’ Nerve sang all over the country at concerts and rallies in support of the miners’ campaign. She has even heard it sung in South Africa, northern Spain and coalfields in the United States.

Perhaps the most moving moments of the evening were when John Burrows, and ex-miner and former NUM official, spoke emotionally not only about the poverty and hunger the miners and their families faced but also “the constant attacks from banks and mortgage companies insistent on being paid.” 

He paid tribute to the camaraderie between the miners and to the politicisation of the women. Following Burrows’ speech, members of Harlequin Brass marched down the main aisle in front of an NUM banner carried by former miners, two of whom had been mayors of Chesterfield.

The last song was a rousing version of the Welsh rebel ballad Cwm Rhondda, sung by Collett and the Rose Choir. It included choruses of the chant from the picket lines “Arthur Scargill, Arthur Scargill, We’ll support you evermore!”

The concert closed with final extracts from the Catholic mass and a beautiful anonymous poem:

Lay my body in the cold, dark cave
I spent my life in darkness
I’ve got no fear of the grave
My spirit will soar in Godly flight
I spent my life in darkness 
So that others would have light.

We streamed out of the church, uplifted by all we had heard and seen.

Where can A Northern Requiem be performed again? Perhaps in Durham Cathedral during the annual miners’ gala, or Sheffield Cathedral or at The Proms? Here’s hoping.