On thier way up Dee Street
Welders, riggers, gangers, boilermakers and plumbers
Caulkers, electricians, carpenters and riveters
Steel workers, stokers, platers and helpers
Tradesmen armed with labour
That bought them Woodbines and Black Label
On Friday nights at the dock bars
And Still thousands poured through the gates
Past the iron shadows of harland and wolff's giant goal posts

Past the banging of metal and steel
Assembling to their workplaces
Before their lunch break of sandwiches with bread and suger

Corned beef, egg and onion, ham and chedder cheese
And many exposed to asbestos rain
As they sat on gangways and boiler rooms
As the falling insulator rained down from ceilings and drilling machines

Creating a fog of comtaminated white dust
That hung around like a death sentence
As men choked and spluttered out spit
For decades no religon mattered as many surrended
Even housewives washing the deadly dust off dungarees

But the chiefs above covered the stories
Never relayed the warnings for generation after generation

As men and woman in their fifties and sixties got sicker
The log books of solicitors filing drawers got thicker
For asbestos became asbestosis
Needle like crystals that found sanctuary clinging to the lungs

As suffering souls fought for every breath
This shameful disease brought death
And Skeletons of men whose sweat cleaned the dry dock