Faustus – Cotton Lords
Westpark Music – 26 April 2019
The Lancashire Cotton Famine was a crisis in the textile industry of North West England from 1861 to 1865 which caused great hardship, unemployment and hunger among working people. The 1850s saw a huge boom in the British cotton industry triggered by cheap imports, rapid industrialisation and new global markets for textiles.
The crash began with overproduction of cotton, but it deepened into disaster when the American Civil War meant cotton imports from the US stopped. This was partly due to a boycott by the Southern States who wanted to force the British government to intervene, and a Union blockade intended to break the South into submission.
The upshot in England was that reasonably-well-paid cotton workers (men and women) suddenly found themselves without work or means to support their families. The burgeoning English working class remained largely stoic, as they didn’t want to side with the slave-owning Southern States. But they still suffered immensely and felt resentful towards the wealthy factory owners who provided little recompense, and towards the government, whose relief provision was archaic and often cruel.
While history books examine the national and international ramifications, the effect on ordinary working families tends to get missed out. But, thankfully, their voices are being heard and amplified thanks to the Poetry of the Lancashire Cotton Famine project from Exeter University. They are putting together an archive of hundreds of contemporary poems by labouring-class writers, with the first 100 already online at cottonfaminepoetry.exeter.ac.uk
This is where Faustus come in. The immensely talented British folk trio was commissioned to trawl the archive and select five verses. It is these they have adapted, updated and set to music for this EP. While some of the poems are believed to have tunes to accompany them, most have been lost or just fragments survive.
The result is a sombre, yet defiant and lyrical collection – proof (if needed) that these factory workers were as sophisticated, witty and astute – often more so – as the landed gentry and parliamentarians. Paul Sartin, Saul Rose and Benji Kirkpatrick put all their musical talents into bringing these verses from the past into the present. And with jobs and livelihoods ever more affected by global trade and international politics, the contemporary resonance is stark.
The EP opens with Cotton Lords (a new title for the poem Food or Work by an unknown writer), a defiant challenge to the industrialists made wealthy from the graft of the cotton workers, but who did not provide for them in their time of need. With exquisite instrumentation and haunting harmonies to the fore, this is the quality we have come to expect from Faustus.
Lancashire Operatives (Starvation) follows and – as the title suggests – is a cry of anguish from unemployed cotton worker William Eaton. The repeated refrain, ‘Pray help us, we are starving’ hammers the message home and it’s a gruelling listen. The line ‘To go about a begging/ Runs sore against the grain’ succinctly summarises the anguish of willing, skilled people unable to work through no fault of their own – now cast adrift with no support. Moving and humbling.
The next track, Lancashire Factory Girl, gives voice to one of the many female factory workers. It’s more sentimental than the defiant first song, or the lament of the second, and it ends with a merciful note of relief, a prayer that an end to the war will return life to normal:
Grant soon that peace may be proclaimed
Among our brethren o’er the sea;
And then our mills will run again,
And happy, happy we shall be!
The fourth song, Wrongs and Rights (which I couldn’t locate in the collection – so maybe this one is yet to appear), is an angrier and more direct protest than the first, which maintains a bitter sense of irony. Like all the tracks here, the tune feels like it has been plucked from the 1860s, which allows the words to speak clearly in context with no attempts at contemporising.
The closing I Would This War Were Ended was written by a W. M. Billington in a very heavy Lancashire dialect. It has been selectively translated into modern English while maintaining the lyricism and authenticity of the original. While governments, gentry and many working people sided with the Union, Billington asserts there is wrong on both sides and war is not the way to solve their differences.
It’s a hard but satisfying listen. You are left with an unmistakable sense that you have encountered the spectral voices of ordinary folk caught up in a disaster that is not of their making, but suffering unimaginable hardship nevertheless. With hundreds more poems to mine, I only hope that Faustus’ in-demand players have the opportunity to bring more of these ghosts of the past to life.
The EP can be ordered on CD via Bandcamp: https://faustusfolk.bandcamp.com/album/cotton-lords-ep
Cotton Lords 2019 EP Launch Concerts
Mon 13 May – Anthony Burgess Centre, Manchester
Wed 15 May – Slaughtered Lamb, London
Photo Credit – Luke Pajak