Boasting of a “secure future in Welsh coal” and “having enough coal for another four hundred years“, ‘People Will Always Need Coal’, the latest track from Public Service Broadcasting’s new album Every Valley, offers a window into the world of Welsh mining in its heyday. Laced with dark irony given the events that were to unfold not ten years later, the track documents the recruitment drive to persuade more young men to dive into a career that offers “money, lots of money, and security“.
Speaking about the importance of the track on the record, J. Willgoose, Esq. explains: “There’s a really quite savage irony to this track when viewed with the benefit of hindsight – of a coal board with the confidence to assure people of safe, prosperous jobs in a strong and stable industry when they were only ten years away from the largest industrial confrontation of the UK’s last fifty years and the decimation of careers, communities and livelihoods. It just goes to show how one age’s absolute confidence can descend into instability and chaos in the blink of an eye, and how state-sponsored pronouncements of certainty should always be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. Also, I think it’s quite a good song.”
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