Paul Salveson<\/p>\n
This is a paper is inspired by the men I used to work with at Blackburn when I was a goods guard. My three years there were crucial to my own career, which has been strange and varied, and generally fun. It’s a is a salute to my educators, coupled with a question: does \u2018railway culture\u2019 still exist, nearly thirty years on from privatisation\u00a0 and in an era of mass culture and dominance of TV and the internet?<\/p>\n
Most of the men I used to work with as a guard were drivers who\u2019d been raised as steam men at Lower Darwen and Rose Grove depots, in East Lancashire. The depots closed with the end of steam in 1968 and footplate staff were transferred to a new depot \u2013 or \u2018signing-on point\u2019 – at Blackburn station. I arrived, fresh out of guard\u2019s training school, early in 1975.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m deeply grateful to many of the people I worked with, some of whom had a degree of cultural awareness I\u2019ve not come across since, in academia, government, or railway management. This isn\u2019t hero worship. The messroom didn\u2019t resound to debates on Kantian metaphysics, nor the leading role of the proletariat in the socialist revolution (though I do recall a heated discussion on the merits of Beethoven versus Mozart!). But quite a few of the men were very well-read, some were skilled musicians, and lots had a real interest in the wider cultural world around them. Hardly any had a \u2018formal\u2019 education, and I can remember Sid Townsend (ex-Rose Grove, \u2018Long Sid\u2019) fulminating against the narrowness of modern university education, typified by a management trainee doing a stint as train crew supervisor. \u2018He knows all abeawt ancient Greek history, but bugger all abeawt owt else\u2019. Damned forever. Jack Bradley, ex-Lower Darwen driver, noted for his flat cap which was possibly older than himself, was a crossword expert. I don\u2019t mean the Mirror \u2018quick crossword\u2019 but the Times, Telegraph and Guardian species. Raymond Watton, ex-Lower Darwen driver, introduced me to the joys of classical music, after having any interest in the subject knocked out of me at school. Raymond had a small amateur orchestra supported by the local Workers Educational Association and wrote occasionally for \u2018The Gramophone\u2019. John de Luca, ex-Rose Grove, was a member of a well-regarded local choir and was known to burst into song in the cab. Leo Kay, ex-Rose Grove, was an avid reader whose greatest passion was the work of D.H. Lawrence. \u2018Don\u2019t read him before you\u2019re turned 40, you\u2019ll not understand him\u2019.<\/p>\n
Several drivers and guards were good photographers, and we formed a \u2018Blackburn S.O.P. Camera Club\u2019 which met in the ambulance room. This was also the venue for the \u2018MIC\u2019 \u2013 Mutual Improvement Class, a unique example of self-education which had existed on the railways for over a century. Now it\u2019s virtually died out, but in the 1970s it was still a strong and active movement. The focus was on technical aspects of railway operations and locomotive management, and the championships were strongly contested.<\/p>\n
Many of the drivers and guards were experts on local history and could point out particular places of interest \u2013 especially on the Blackburn \u2013 Settle \u2013 Carlisle route. People like Ernie Lamb, Blackburn guard, had an amazing store of tales about the \u2018S&C\u2019 which I greatly regret never scribbling down. The oral tradition on the railway was still very strong. Some of the \u2018old hand\u2019 drivers and guards had careers stretching back to the late 1930s and they could remember the stories told them by their seniors. Lots of the men were part of railway families stretching back several generations. They were typical railwaymen: totally dedicated to the railways, and strong \u2018union men\u2019 at the same time. They saw themselves as the real protectors of the railway, with little time for most of the managers.<\/p>\n
Blackburn depot wasn\u2019t untypical, I\u2019m sure. I worked with men from Carlisle, Crewe, Healey Mills (a rough lot it must be said), and shared messroom tables at Crewe and Carlisle with drivers and guards from much further afield. You would never be short of an interesting conversation, be it on railways, politics, gardening or the world in general. Equally, if you were into card-games you\u2019d have lots of \u2018schools\u2019 to choose from.<\/p>\n
Is there a distinct \u2018railway\u2019 culture? Compare it with some traditional industries and it\u2019s less obvious. The pits produced some good novelists and of course choral singers were legion in South Wales. The textile mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire had countless brass and silver bands, usually sponsored by the mill-owners. They also produced an immense flowering of dialect literature, mostly poetry. The railway companies did sponsor bands, and there were regular reports in the staff newspapers. I\u2019d love to spend a few months researching all of them. Definitions of culture are notoriously difficult, and in this paper I use a tight definition which is really about \u2018artistic creativity\u2019 rather than \u2018culture\u2019 in the general sociological sense of \u2018everyday life\u2019. The remarkable tradition of station gardening should perhaps form the subject of another paper, or even book.<\/p>\n
Much railway workers\u2019 culture in other parts of the world was highly political. The US Industrial Workers of the World produced dozens of songs about railroad life. Post-war Hungary, and the other \u2018people\u2019s democracies\u2019 saw the growth of railway workers\u2019 culture, supported by the new communist governments as shining examples of proletarian culture. And actually, it was. Hungarian State Railways (MAV) still sponsors a world-class symphony orchestra, which originally was entirely composed of working railwaymen and women. There are several local wind orchestras on the MAV network. In France, the CGT union and its Communist Party sister formed a world within a world. Union and Party created a culture of solidarity and class consciousness which was remarkably strong, and was forged in the heat of the war-time resistance. The CGT-owned \u2018bourses de travail\u2019 were the centres for a wide range of cultural activities, including song, drama and orchestral work.<\/p>\n
So what about here in Britain? The Labour Party has never been that much interested in \u2018culture\u2019. It was left to the tiny Communist Party to encourage, as much as it could, \u2018worker writers\u2019 in the 1930s. In the 1970s independent bodies like Commonword in Manchester supported some railway workers, like Joe Smythe, a Newton Heath guard.<\/p>\n
Despite Labour Party indifference, the railway unions have a pretty good record of supporting their members\u2019 cultural development. ASLE&F on occasions sponsored publications of members\u2019 poetry and prose. ASLE&F was, and still is, an example of \u2018craft unionism\u2019 in which pride in the job as a watchword, and culture was not to be sneered at. F.W. Skerrett\u2019s \u2018Rhymes of the Rail\u2019 was published by Goodall and Suddick \u2013 printers of ASLE&F\u2019s \u2018Locomotive Journal\u2019 for decades. Skerrett was a fireman, then driver, at Patricroft shed, Manchester, in the 1920s. The book had a foreword by the union general secretary, John Bromley, who referred to the \u2018American Brotherhood\u2019s\u2019 poet, Patrick Fennell (\u2018Shandy Maguire\u2019). Bromley also mentioned that Skerrett read some of his work to the union\u2019s AGMs in 1918 and 1919. Skerrett\u2019s poems epitomise the craft consciousness of the footplate, and \u2018Ode to the Driver\u2019 is very much an assault on the \u2018lesser grades\u2019 of guard, signalman, and controller!<\/p>\n
\u2018so kind and obliging to all other grades<\/em><\/p>\n That they take it for granted it\u2019s part of your trade\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n And then proceeds to have a go at each of them in turn! Some of his work is an echo, and tribute, to Burns \u2013 really the figure which towers over working class literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.<\/p>\n One of his best poems is \u2018The Fireman\u2019s Growl\u2019 which was revived by footplateman-singer Don Bilston in the 1970s.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s not all beer and skittles, this blooming job of mine,<\/em><\/p>\n And it\u2019s not a bed of roses, isn\u2019t firing on the line.<\/em><\/p>\n You don\u2019t get too much money, you get lots of slack instead,<\/em><\/p>\n And they teach you how to work at night and earn your daily bread.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Somewhere in my archives I\u2019ve an early copy of ASLE&F\u2019s \u2018Locomotive Journal\u2019, for about 1889, which gives details of the fascinating cultural world of the footplate. One of the Manchester branches was organising a \u2018soiree\u2019 which included female singers giving excerpts from \u2018Lucia de Lammermoor\u2019! \u2018Smoking concerts\u2019 were popular, invariably accompanied by suitably elevating songs.<\/p>\n ASLE&F was not the only union to take an interest in cultural matters. In one of the most remarkable literary events in working class literature, the Newton Heath branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, round about 1899, actually passed a resolution condemning the unsuitable ending of a novel by local writer Allen Clarke! The novel had been serialised in Clarke\u2019s \u2018Northern Weekly\u2019 which was widely read by educated working men and women in Lancashire. The A.S.R.S. was the fore-runner of the NUR, and today\u2019s RMT, and was instrumental in publishing \u2018Songs of the Line\u2019 by Walter Hampson, in 1905. Several of the poems had been published in the union paper, Railway Review. His poem \u2018The ASRS Brotherhood\u2019 is a sharp contrast to Skerrett\u2019s sectionalism:<\/p>\n \u2018Of grade distinction it knows none \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n No section, class or clan;<\/em><\/p>\n ALL railwaymen may come within<\/p>\n Its all-embracing span\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n Branches of the Railway Clerks Association \u2013 now the TSSA \u2013 organised regular dances and concerts for their members. The London Divisional Councils held an annual concert for many years. The Glasgow branches formed a male voice choir in 1923, which became a mixed choir in 1925. Concerts helped to raise money for union-sponsored Labour Party candidates.<\/p>\n There is of course one cultural form which is at the very heart of trades unionism \u2013 the banner. The railway unions are no exception, and each of the \u2018big three\u2019 have superb examples of banner art, some of which are of great historical value as well as\u00a0 artistic merit.<\/p>\n Many of the outstanding railwaymen-writers were members of the Communist Party. Some were influenced by ‘worker-writers’ from the Soviet bloc though by the 1960s the rigid forms of ‘socialist relaism’ gave way to what was, in fact, a more ‘realistic’ approach to railway life. A truly outstanding writer was Bob Bonnar, an NUR locoman from Fife whom I had the pleasure of knowing back in the 1970s. He was elected to the NUR National Executive when I was avtive in the union, but I didn’t realise he was a talented novelist until many years later. His novel Stewartie<\/em> was published in 1964 by the CP’s publishing house, Lawrence and Wishart. It is strongly influenced by the wonderful Lewis Grassic Gibbon, whose Scots Quair<\/em> is one of the truly great Scots novels. Bonnar’s novel is based on life at Thornton loco shed in the 1950s and features political conflicts within the union, particularly between right-wing careerist Labour people and – no surprise – the principled CP railwaymen typified by the hero, ‘Stewartie’.<\/p>\n Another talented communist railwayman\/writer was George Chandler, a railway clerk and member of the Railway Clerks’ Association (later the TSSA). He started his railway career in Manchester in 1919, on the LNER, but moved down to London where he was based at Marylebone. He wrote fictional pieces about railway life in the RCA’s Railway Service Journal<\/em> and also The Daily Worker, <\/em>sometimes using the pseudonym of ‘A.P. Roley’ (geddit?). A fascinating writer whose short stories deserve re-publishing.<\/p>\n A few songs have survived into the modern folk repertory. \u2018Paddy Works on the Railway<\/em>\u2019 is a well-known Dubliners\u2019 number, but was probably written mid-nineteenth century, if not earlier. \u2018Moses of the Mail\u2019<\/em>, recorded by Ewan McColl, was probably written in the 1880s and was popular in the Manchester area of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. McColl also sings a lovely Scottish song about a mother soothing her young child and bidding her not to wake up dad, who\u2019s working nights. And no, I can\u2019t remember the title (but it\u2019s maybe \u2018Cannily, Cannily\u2019<\/em>). Some cultural activities survived in the folk memory. I can remember an old Bolton driver telling me about Saturday nights at Brindle Heath Sidings in the 30s, when one of the shunters entertained his colleagues with clog dancing demonstrations, often with instrumental accompaniment.<\/p>\n Some companies sponsored brass bands, and staff were given paid time off for rehearsals and performances. It\u2019s arguable how much all this was subtle attempt by the employers to \u2018incorporate\u2019 their workers and keep them off the drink, and how much was a genuine effort to promote their employees\u2019 cultural endeavours. Probably elements of both. In the bigger railway towns of Darlington, Crewe, Swindon, Derby and York\u00a0 there was\u00a0 a plethora of bands, small orchestras, amateur dramatic societies and the like. Darlington, heart of the North Eastern empire, for many years had a \u2018Railwaymen\u2019s Carnival\u2019. The origins of this lie in 1886 when a goods guard died following an accident on the line. He could have survived if staff had been in attendance at the woefully under-funded hospital. The local trades unions banded together to organise a campaign to raise funds for the hospital and 5000 people attended a demonstration in support of the idea. The ASRS nominated one of their members to serve on the Hospital Committee, a position it held for many years. Hundreds of fund-raising events ere organised, but the carnival itself began in 1924, at the instigation of LNER staff. The company was strongly supportive and the LNER\u2019s senior management was represented on the carnival committee, alongside Labour councillors and trade union officers. The first carnival showed the range of talent in Darlington\u2019s railway community:<\/p>\n LNER Silver Band; LNER Military Band; Tableaux by North Road Erecting Shop, Coppershop and Pattern Shop<\/p>\n Each department of the railway, in the workshops, locomotive, station and permanent way, entered the carnival\u00a0 – which became known as \u2018The Railwaymen\u2019s Effort\u2019. Remarkably, the carnival went ahead in 1926, only weeks after the General Strike which had seen police baton-charges against striking railway workers at Bank Top station. The parade comprised over 1000 participants including the North Road Works Erecting Shop\u2019s \u2018Toy Drum Major Band\u2019, hundreds of cyclists and numerous jazz bands.<\/p>\n The Darlington carnivals indicated the political and social dominance \u2013 hegemony – which railway labour began to exert by the 1930s, representing a marked departure from the stifling and oppressive atmosphere of some company towns in the nineteenth century (Webb\u2019s Crewe being notorious but not exceptional). The town\u2019s political and economic life, well into the 1960s, was dominated by the railway, and the ruling Labour councillors were overwhelmingly railway trades unionists. The same kind of hegemony was evident in other towns, where railway workers and their families formed a dominant force in local society. At Horwich, the railway ran through every aspect of life. The \u2018RMI\u2019, or Railway Mechanics Institute, was the focus of the town\u2019s social, cultural and recreational activities. \u2018The Works\u2019 employed someone from most households in the town. The same could be said for small towns like Melton Constable, Inverurie and Carnforth which owed their growth, if not existence, to the railway. Each railway town would have a full gamut of artistic societies, orchestras, and bands.<\/p>\n Individual railwaymen, not particularly tied to trade union or political loyalties, produced interesting and important work. John Ceiriog Hughes, one of the most important figures in Welsh literature in the nineteenth century, was manager of the Van Railway in Mid Wales, after a spell as station master at Llanidloes on the Cambrian. The line could never be described as busy, and \u2018Ceiriog\u2019 undoubtedly had the time to write some of his poetry while at work. He is famous as author of \u2018Men of Harlech\u2019 and \u2018Myfanwy Vychan\u2019 amongst many other popular songs of the late nineteenth century. An interesting footnote to the history of locomotive sheds concerns the marriage of Ceiriog\u2019s daughter in 1883. The wedding reception and dance took place in the locomotive shed at Van, decorated with \u2018Chinese lanterns, flags, bunting and flowers\u2019!<\/p>\n \u2018Ceiriog\u2019s\u2019 work could not be described as light or humorous. Few working men poets were given to levity. However, \u2018Inspector Aitken\u2019, of the Glasgow and South Western Railway, had a genuine sense of humour, reflected in some of his poems published in \u2018Songs from the South West\u2019 published in Glasgow in 1913. \u2018Shifting the Pints\u2019 describes the unexpected visit of a straight-laced inspector, who arrives to find the shunting yard deserted. The poem works on the Glaswegian similarity between \u2018points\u2019 and \u2018pints\u2019. The inspector notices the nearby pub, and enters, enquiring of four shunters, sat with their drinks \u2018Is this where the shunting of wagons is done?\u2019 \u2013 to which one of the gang replies:<\/p>\n \u2018with a face all agrin and a twinkling eye,<\/em><\/p>\n Comes\u00a0 a laugh and a smile and a ready reply<\/em><\/p>\n From Bob the ball turner, whom nothing disjoints,<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf we\u2019re not shunting wagons we\u2019re shifting the pints\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n And of course there\u2019s Branwell Bronte, drinking himself to oblivion whilst purporting to be station master at Luddendenfoot.<\/p>\n In the 1970s there were a number of railway workers writing poetry and prose. Perhaps the most important was Joe Smythe, a guard at Newton Heath and subsequently Manchester Victoria depot. Joe was part of the Commoword group of worker-writers in Manchester, and had work published in Voices, published by the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers. A collection of his poems was published as \u2018The People\u2019s Road\u2019 in 1981, almost co-inciding with the 150th<\/sup> anniversary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Joe was able to take three month\u2019s leave funded by the NUR to write a series of poems \u2013 not an easy job, as he explained in \u2018Third Shunt\u2019 \u2013 a poem about writer\u2019s block! \u2018New Song for an Old Dead\u2019 celebrates the scores of navvies who died building the Woodhead line:<\/p>\n \u2018We knew the bitterness of death <\/em><\/p>\n from bitterness in life<\/em><\/p>\n Angels in a digging hell<\/p>\n Past hope of paradise\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Joe\u2019s poetry was sharp, unromantic and powerful.<\/p>\n One of the railway\u2019s most unusual virtuosos was, or is, Adrian Schofield. Champion Northumbrian pipe player, and former signalman. Adrian learnt to play the pipes whilst working nights at Bullfield West box, Bolton. He went on to become one of the country\u2019s best, no doubt infuriating native Northumbrians with his Bolton accent and punk haircut.<\/p>\n Don Bilston, former Saltley fireman, wrote some brilliant songs about railway life towards the end of steam, as did Dave Goulder. Bilston revived Skerett\u2019s \u2018Fireman\u2019s Growl\u2019. Goulder wrote some moving songs about the end of steam and its human impact, as well as the jolly \u2018I\u2019d Like to be a Lengthman\u2019. There\u2019s a great collection of poetry by Scottish railway workers, published in the 1970s, called \u2018Steam Lines\u2019. It was put together by a retired Polmadie driver, William McLagan. He pays tribute to \u2018the philosophers and dreamers, and comic singers \u2013 every footplate and bothy had a fair share of them\u2019. There\u2019s lots of entertaining stuff, some that\u2019s maybe best described as doggerel. But I like some of it, doggerel or not, like this by Jock Barret:<\/p>\n I\u2019ve finished oiling jumbos, <\/em><\/p>\n And I\u2019ve done with driving pugs<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m leaving all that nonsense to a thousand other mugs.<\/em><\/p>\n I canny get oot quick enough<\/em><\/p>\n As sure as I\u2019m alive<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m tying off and going home<\/em><\/p>\n For now I\u2019m sixty five\u2019<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The period immediately before the end of steam encouraged several railway workers to take their cameras to work: Jim Carter, of Skerrett\u2019s old shed, Patricroft, stands head and shoulders above most. His photographs of steam on the Diggle route, and shed scenes, are works of art. The locomotive is very much placed in its wider context. People, landscape, buildings figure, rather than standard three-quarter front views of engines.<\/p>\n Railway workers\u2019 culture existed well before nationalization in 1948, and it would be ridiculous to say that \u2018privatisation\u2019 has somehow killed it. It\u2019s out there, in lots of different expressions \u2013 music, literature, painting, drama. As long as there\u2019s a railway, there will be railway culture but it will be very different from that of the past, if it is to have any meaning or relevance. Railway people retain a strong loyalty to their industry, and to the \u2018railway community\u2019. The same difficulties, of unsocial hours and the physical isolation of railway workers, remains \u2013 but these are not, and never have been, insuperable obstacles. In larger railway centres there will be bands, drama groups, choirs and other \u2018collective\u2019 cultural activities. Individual railway workers will continue to write, paint and perform.<\/p>\n While we should be supporting a \u2018modern\u2019 railway culture, it would be wrong to consign the cultural traditions of the past to obscurity. One of the great strengths of the railway industry is the \u2018collective memory\u2019. This has taken a very hard knock over the last ten years, and perhaps a lot of people are beginning to realise that not everything in \u2018the old railway\u2019 was irrelevant and out of date. This collective memory was above all the passing on of the unwritten aspects of the job, ways of getting the job done which could never be enshrined in the Rule Book or in a Group Standard. It was about a pride in doing the job well which goes back to the beginning of the railways. But that collective memory also included wider \u2018cultural\u2019 elements in perhaps the broader sense. Some of the young drivers at Huddersfield who work the Penistone Line proudly wear \u2018Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway\u2019 badges alongside their ASLE&F insignia. They don\u2019t need anyone to tell them<\/em> where they\u2019re from, and which part of the railway tradition they belong to – even though some of them never even worked for BR, let alone its predecessors. That sort of gives me hope. They\u2019re keen, committed to the job and doing it well, and recognise that they\u2019re part of a tradition stretching back generations. Any railway manager who doesn\u2019t see that as a good thing should go and work for Marks and Spencers.<\/p>\n If railway culture isn\u2019t dead, perhaps it\u2019s too well hidden. As an industry we could do more to promote it \u2013 surely it\u2019s in a railway company\u2019s interest to support and show off the creative talent it employs? Why can\u2019t the unions do more to support the cultural activities of their members, as they have done so well in the past? But there\u2019s a limit to how much you can force artistic development \u2013 much state or commercially-sponsored culture can be bloody awful. In Britain there isn\u2019t a tradition of supporting industry-based cultural activity \u2013 perhaps we should think about changing that. The railways would be a good place to start.<\/p>\n William (Inspector) Aitken \u2018Songs from the South-West\u2019 1913<\/p>\n Philip Bagwell \u2018The Railwaymen\u2019 1963<\/p>\n Derek Cornforth \u2018The Railwaymen\u2019s Effort\u2019 n.d., c 1990<\/p>\n Lewis Cozens \u2018The Van and Kerry Railways\u2019 1953<\/p>\n Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers \u2018Voices\u2019<\/p>\n John Gorman \u2018Banner Bright\u2019 1973<\/p>\n Walter Hampson \u2018Songs of the Line\u2019 1905<\/p>\n Joseph Jacquet \u2018Les Cheminots dans l\u2019Histoire Social de France\u2019 1967<\/p>\n Norman McKillop \u2018The Lighted Flame\u2019 1950<\/p>\n William Mclagan (ed.) \u2018Steam Lines\u2019 n.d. c 1982<\/p>\n F.W. Skerrett, \u2018Rhymes of the Rail\u2019 1920<\/p>\n Joe Smythe \u2018The People\u2019s Road\u2019 1981<\/p>\n Malcolm Wallace \u2018Single or Return? History of the TSSA\u2019 1996<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MESS ROOM POETS, BRAKE VAN PHILOSOPHERS Railway workers\u2019 culture in Britain Paul Salveson This is a paper is inspired by the men I used to work with at Blackburn when I was a goods guard. My three years there were crucial to my own career, which has been strange and varied, and generally fun. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1014,"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions\/1014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/index.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bloody communists<\/h5>\n
The oral tradition<\/h5>\n
Cultural life in the railway towns<\/h5>\n
The Cambrian\u2019s \u2018Ceiriog\u2019, and the Sou-Western\u2019s Inspector Aitken<\/h5>\n
Modern Times<\/h5>\n
Post-privatisation railway culture<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Bibliography<\/h5>\n