Ballad of the By-Election for Lindsay Whittle, Caerffili 2025

Adam Price (with apologies to Harri Webb)

The town was tired of thunder,
tired of flags that fray,
tired of blue men shouting
their past back into play.

Down Station Road, the leaflets
stuck fast in wind and rain:
one promised the good old days,
and one the world again.

The wind that walks the valley
still hums a miner’s tune—
half hymn, half hard defiance,
beneath a working moon.

It passed the shuttered shopfronts,
the chapels turned to gyms,
the kitchens where the kettle sang
old wages into hymns.

Then Lindsay came—grey-templed,
but quick in heart and will,
his words like well-worn pit-boots,
his humour warm and still.

He spoke of bread, not banners,
of buses that still run,
of roofs repaired, of fairness
as common as the sun.

And people, used to promises
that vanish overnight,
ticked his name like striking
a match against the night.

The count was slow as conscience;
each paper breathed “believe.”
Reform’s blue roar fell silent,
like wind behind the eaves.

At two a.m. Caerffili
breathed deep and woke again;
and in the hush before the cheer
the valleys spoke as one.

Not triumph but remembering,
not victory, repair—
the long, long work of kindness
Was written everywhere.

Harri would have rhymed it
with laughter, hymn and sting;
but here’s the truth in plainer song:
the valleys still can sing—
that decency’s our language,
and was spoken clear,
in Caerffili through the drizzle,
like coal-dust in a tear.