FOR the first time in ages, I have been dipping into the poems of Tom Stamp. An absolute delight, though they provide more to say than that.

Born and bred in Whitby, Tom, who died in 1991, was a quiet, thoughtful, extremely well-read man who ran a hardware shop in his native town. Not in the main shopping area but in a largely residential street up on the West Cliff. One of his poems anticipates the famous Two Ronnies four candles mix-up, though with a different item.

Customer asks for what Tom hears as “anti-quacks”. Believing this is a humorous request for something to discourage ducks, Tom, fond of wild life, begins to digress on ducks, only to be met with "a rather angry stare, he said: 'I want to polish up a chair'.”

Tom served him with the antique wax he needed, remarking that he had been surprised the customer wished to "vent his spleen" on "poor innocent and harmless birds".

Even at that time, back in the 1960s or 1970s, the seagull was being treated as a menace. Tom spoke up, poetically, for the bird:

For man takes to the ambient air
To scatter death and dark despair,
And your poor trivial falls from grace
Can never match his huge disgrace.

Undoubtedly Tom’s best poem is his Whitby in Winter. With a succession of spot-on images – "great waves leaping", the pier "deserted, left like an abandoned ship", the "blanched, rank grass" up in the churchyard, folk crossing the bridge "back bent and wind spent", and more – it could take its place with the best in any anthology of topographical verse.

But none of this is what I’ve come to say today. Another of Tom’s poems is Welfare State. Born in 1918, Tom was old enough to remember pre-welfare Britain. There are not many left now who do. Though recognising its abuse by some, Tom gave the new order a vigorous thumbs-up.

This Britain of the welfare age
I find a brighter, better stage,
Less of greed and less of grind,
More of equity I find.

He pinpointed some details:

Folk who worked long hours for paltry pay
Can now enjoy a decent working day…
You never see a barefoot boy…
And old and crippled workhouse strays
Are never seen these Welfare days.

For readers today the key lines are surely these:

Young and old are both secure
And no-one’s very rich or very poor,
And though some parasites are found
At least the robber-barons don’t abound.

That now doesn’t hold good, does it? What abounds are food banks, while the robber barons have reappeared in the guise of the companies running our privatised public services.

And on the day I re-discovered this poem of Tom’s, I read that David and Samantha Cameron, who already own homes in London and the Cotswolds worth £5.1m, are buying a £2m holiday home in Cornwall.

Down the road soon will be Gordon and Tana Ramsey. They’ve bought a £4m house – to demolish and replace with their purpose-built bolt hole.

If Tom Stamp were alive today he would need to revise his Welfare State poem. It would be with a heavy heart that he would write: "Less of equity I find."