Red Hill Mining Town -- U2

From father to son  The blood runs thin See faces frozen still 
Against the wind  The seam is split The coal face cracked The lines are long 
There's no going back  Through hands of steel And heart of stone 
Our labour day  Has come and gone  you leave me holding on 
In Red Hill Town  See lights go down, I'm. Hanging on  You're all that's
left to hold on to I'm still waiting  I'm hanging on  You're all that's 
left to hold on to 

The glass is cut  The bottle run dry Our love runs cold  In the caverns
of the night  We're wounded by fear Injured in doubt I can lose myself 
You I can't live without  you keep me holding on In Red Hill Town 
See the lights go down on  I'm hanging on You're all that's left to hold on
to  I'm still waiting Hanging on You're all that's left to hold on to 

We'll scorch the earth Set fire to the sky We stoop so low to reach so high 
A link is lost The chain undone We wait all day For night to come 
And it comes  Like a hunter child   I'm hanging on You're all that's left
to hold on to I'm still waiting I'm hanging on You're all that's left to 
hold on to Love.slowly stripped away Love.has seen its better day 

Hanging on Let's go out on Red Hill Let's go down on Red Hill 
Let's go down on Red Hill Town  Let's go down on Red Hill

This is about the United Kingdom miners' strike of 1984. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had instituted a policy where mines that were considered unprofitable were shut down. Bono wanted to explore the impact the strike had on the miner's friends and families.        (songfacts)

            Red Hill Mining Town 

 


The UK miners' strike was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trade union movement. The strike became a symbolic struggle, since the National Union of Mineworkers  was one of the strongest unions in the country, viewed by many, as having brought down the Heath government in the union's 1974 strike. The later strike ended with the miners' defeat and the Thatcher government able to consolidate its fiscally conservative programme. The political power of the NUM was broken permanently. The dispute exposed deep divisions in British society and caused considerable bitterness, especially in Northern England and in Wales. Ten deaths resulted from events around the strike: six picketers, three teenagers searching for coal, and a taxi driver taking a non-striking miner to work.                (wikipedia)  

                                           Margaret Thatcher Interview during Miners Strike (1984)