Keir Hardie Street, an excerpt
Alan Morrison

Born in a haunted corner of Scotland, of kelpie-
Humped lochs and Pan-piped galloping woods,
Close to Claverhouse’s groomed dragoons;
Illegitimate son of a servant-girl from Legbrannock,
Step-sired by an atheist carpenter,
Schooled in obscurity’s cramped one-roomed house,
Raised on porridge oats and Robbie Burns —
‘Lines on Seeing a Wounded Hare’
Fuelled him on compassion’s damp-steaming anger —
Fired in the pit of his belly’s grumbling brogue,
Conscience-lit by spark of injustice at first hand
As a brow-crowded child, a Little Father Time
Gifted burning vision, he cast off Calvinism…
And donned the kinder-clothed Baptist overalls,
Marched with the miners to massed Annbank brass,
Learnt to speak in temperance meetings, teetotal of tongue,
Soap-box for a pulpit, tugged himself up rung by rung,
From blacklisted collier to collared correspondent
For the Airdrie District — editor of The Miner...

Then Politics: Member for North-West Ham,
Took his seat in Parliament in red tie and tweeds,
Alternate cap or deerstalker, no frockcoat for he,
Braced in proletariat spiritual khakis;
Mrs. Grundy almost fainted when she scanned
The costume of the new-comer but for her
Smelling salts — O what a brouhaha!
So offended was she by this chiselled, bearded pauper
Replete in blue serge double-breasted jacket,
Fawn-coloured trousers, striped flannel shirt,
Scarf round his neck in a sailor’s knot…

Sent down the coal mine when a bit laddie of eight…
Unable to sign his name on the membership pledge
Of the Good Templers… so ashamed he set to work
To learn to write… — what lightning he’d write —
The fisherfolk apostles in the New Testament
Would find themselves more at home in the company
Of Keir Hardie than in any other member
Of the House… Emphatically a man of the future…
…his future foxish face, feral-browed, keen-eyed,
Ear-pricked and whiskered, howling storm-filled speeches,
Thunderously tub-thumped sermons hollered from his pulpit
In Pharisaic Parliament to the bash of gritted fists:
The still small voice of Jesus the Communist
Stole over the earth like a soft refreshing breeze
Carrying healing wherever it went…
Then in a stroke he tumbled by the mighty blow
Of pugilist opponents’ vocal wrecking-balls;
A drubbing by the jingoes!

...his twilight years witnessed this scene:
Retiring Leader of the Red Rose (having passed the baton
On to ever keen-eyed Arthur Henderson);
A harassed old white-haired lion of politics, Aslan
Of Socialism, fatally mauled by the mocking
Goblins of the Commons, crawling back into
Obscurity’s dreary den, amid
Dull mundane thuds of book-packing...

This is an extract from Morrison’s long poem Keir Hardie Street (Smokestack Books, 2010), and was written to mark this centenary of Hardie’s death. The volume is still in print and can be ordered from the publisher at the following link: http://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=36.

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