bill\sables
I don't know if John Routledge is still search for the answer to his question, but according to Bert Lloyd, referencing Tommy Armstrong’s son, the song was the result of a song-making competition in Tanfield, County Durham. Of the song, Lloyd says ‘The owners [of Oakey Colliery] had decided to evict strikers who were living in colliery-owned cottages, and they scoured the slums of Newcastle and Gateshead for layabouts and riffraff (‘candymen’ are rag-and-bone merchants) to help move the pitmen’s furniture out into the street.’