Today I once again mark the tragic day when on Friday 21 October 1966, a terrible disaster struck the close-knit and thriving coal mining village of Aberfan in the South Wales Valleys, a tragedy which still stuns those of a certain age, and which has lessons still very relevant to new generations.
For decades leading up to 1966 excavated mining debris from the National Coal Board's Merthyr Vale Colliery had been deposited on the side of Mynydd Merthyr, directly above Aberfan in the South Wales valleys.
At approximately 9.14am on the last day before half-term at the Pantglas schools below, after several days of heavy rain, liquified waste poured down the coal tip, sliding down the mountain slide into the mining village of Aberfan, This black tidal wave would engulf everything in its path in this catastrophic tragedy. It would smother a farm, around twenty houses, demolish Pantglas Junior School and severely damage the Secondary School. It is a mercy that lessons in the secondary school did not start until 9:30, meaning that many of those children were still walking towards the building at the time of the landslide. The eye-witnesses report that when the landslide stopped there was complete silence: for example a local hairdresser who witnessed the landslide reported that “In that silence you couldn’t hear a bird or a child”
Immediately desperate parents rushed to the scene, many digging through the rubble with their bare hands, trying to rescue the buried children. Police from Merthyr Tydfil arrived on the site, volunteers rushed to the village including miners from local collieries and other pits across South Wales. Conditions remained treacherous with a large amount of water and mud still flowing down the slope. Some children were pulled out alive in the first hour, but no survivors were found after 11 am. Emergency services workers and volunteers continued their rescue efforts but it was nearly a week before all the bodies were recovered.
The final death toll was 144, including 116 children between the ages of 7 and 10. It was a whole week before all the bodies were recovered. Most of the victims were interred at Bryntaf Cemetery in Aberfan in a funeral held on 27 October 1966, attended by more than 2,000 people.
The shock that was felt went beyond South Wales too. The television coverage allowed a collective witnessing of the disaster and turned it into a national tragedy. Parents, children, mining communities, Welsh exiles, people who had been evacuated to the area during the Second World War – so many people across Britain and worldwide felt a deep personal empathy and sympathy with those who suffered in the disaster. The surviving 50,000 letters of condolence sent to the village are a testament to that sympathy.The writings show of the warmth of the nation and its people.
This horror was made even more poignant as news emerged of previous warnings and previous slides that had been brushed aside. The National Coal Board (NCB) had been repeatedly been warned to move the slag heaps to a safer location, because the loose rock and mining spoil had been piled over a layer of porous sandstone that contained many underground springs. Local authorities had already raised concerns about the tip pointing out that it posed a risk to the village primary school. The NCB's area management did not adequately act upon these concerns.
Did the NCB have the decency to acknowledge their blame, to bow their head in shame, like hell no, but we were to learn sadly far too late that the NCB was ostensibly a capitalist organisation more concerned with profit than lives. The Rt. Hon. Lord Robens of Woldingham, a former trade unionist and Labour politician whom the Macmillan government had appointed chairman of the National Coal Board, arrived 36 hours later, having first gone to Guildford to be installed as chancellor of Surrey University. He announced that the cause of the disaster was an unknown spring underneath the tip. This was immediately challenged by villagers who had known it all their lives.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who had reached Aberfan 24 hours before Robens, ordered an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1921, headed by a judge assisted by an engineer and a planning lawyer.
The subsequent tribunal placed blame for the disaster upon the National Coal Board stating in its damning conclusion: 'The Aberfan disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted'.
Nevertheless, the top management of the NCB tried to give the impression at the inquiry that they had 'no more blameworthy connection than the Gas Board'. The NCB wasted up to 76 days of inquiry time by refusing to admit the liability that they had privately accepted before the inquiry had started. The tribunal called this 'nothing short of audacious'. This may be the strongest language ever used in a tribunal report about a UK public body.
The chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB) at the time was Alfred Lord Robens. When he eventually arrived in Aberfan on the evening of the day after the disaster, he told a TV reporter that the slide had been due to 'natural unknown springs' beneath the tip and that nothing could have been done to prevent the slide. This was not true, the springs had been known about and were marked on maps of the area. Yet the NCB had continued to tip on top of these springs. The potential danger posed by the tip to Pantglas school had also been previously acknowledged. There had also been previous incidents of tip instability in South Wales that would have given clear information on the very real dangers posed.
Lord Robens also claimed that it was too expensive to remove the tips, with an estimated cost of £3 million pounds. In response, the community of Aberfan formed a Tip Removal Committee to actively seek out contractors for estimates to remove the tips. Eventually the tips were removed by the NCB, but using £150,000 that Lord Robens appropriated from the disaster fund. Understandably, this caused long-term resentment in the community. In 1997, this sum (but without interest) was repaid to the fund by the UK government.
The Aberfan inquiry of 1967 stated: ‘Our strong and unanimous conclusion is that the Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented’.Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board. The legal liabilities of the National Coal Board to pay compensation for the personal injury fatal or otherwise) and damage to property is incontestable and uncontested."
A section of the report condemned the behaviour of Lord Robens:"For the National Coal Board, through its counsel, thus to invite the Tribunal to ignore the evidence given by its Chairman was, at one and the same time, both remarkable and, in the circumstances, understandable. Nevertheless, the invitation is one which we think it right to accept."
A few weeks later, Lord Robens offered to resign. The minister, Richard Marsh, refused to accept his resignation. The Commons debated the disaster in October 1967. The debate was painful and inconclusive. But at least Aberfan made the dangers of ignoring workplace risks and the catastrophic effects on both occupational and public health and safety all too obvious.
The Wilson government found the NCB guilty, but the price they placed on each small head was just £500. Worldwide, people were less insensitive, donations poured in daily and a trust fund was set up, that attracted donations of £1,750,000 (equivalent to about £30 million today), with money being received in the form of more than 90,000 contributions from over 40 countries. This fund distributed the money in a number of ways, including direct payments to the bereaved, the construction of a memorial, repairs to houses, respite breaks for villagers and the construction of a community centre. However, the fund itself attracted considerable controversy. First, when the fund was created it did not include any representatives from Aberfan itself; and another insult ensued. The bereaved families were not thought to be competent enough to distribute the funds. The grieving families were outraged. The villagers took it upon themselves to form a Parents and Residents' Association, and their solicitors eventually persuaded bureaucrats to include five representatives from Aberfan. The ten officials who were not from Aberfan accepted highly paid salaries from the fund.
The Government of the day was also extremely insensitive to the victims families, and people would have to wait for years for compensation. It was also to the eternal shame of Lord George Thomas of Tonypandy that he did not do more to support the people of Aberfan, and it was the shame of the establishment that funds raised for the disaster were used to move the slag heaps from the school. Thomas many believed was more interested in toadying up to Royalty than supporting the people of the valleys. Perhaps what moved Welsh Labour to take some action were the fear of other voices speaking out. Plaid Cymru MP, Gwynfor Evans elected in 1966 suggested that had the slag heap had fell on Eton or a school in the Home Counties more would have been done.
The security of Labour’s hold on south Wales and the governments shameful marginalisation of the village’s needs after the disaster meant he was probably quite right. Indeed, the disaster played a key role in convincing some in Wales that both the nationalised coal industry and Labour governance were no longer operating in the interests of the working-class communities they were supposed to represent.
Aberfan at least added to a growing sense that the risks the public were exposed to by industry had to be controlled. This feeling eventually led to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (HSWA) 1974 which aims to protect both workers and non-workers from the risks of workplace activities.
Indeed, the HSWA notably requires that employers must safeguard people not in their employment. This includes members of the public, contractors, patients, customers, visitors and students. This may be seen as Aberfan’s legacy. Unbelievably, the committee which effectively led to the creation of the HSWA was chaired by none other than Lord Robens!
Earlier legislation such as the Factories Acts focused on specific industries or workplaces. This meant over 5 million workers had no Health & Safety protection – as well as the generally ignored public. The law was then more concerned with making sure machinery was safe!
One key feature of the 1972 Robens Committee Report that is echoed in today’s Health & Safety is the principle of consultation. So whilst we can be comforted by the fact that legislation is more demanding and the safety of people is put first, history tells us that we must never be complacent, take the example of Hillsborough for instance. .
Today though we remember the people of Aberfan, their collective loss, a community that is still profoundly affected by this disaster and injustice, having paid the dirty price of coal, one in three survivors still suffering from Post traumatic stress, over 50 years after this tragic event took place. The community of the Welsh town was deeply traumatised – the psychological and emotional effects rippled from one generation to the next, people felt guilty that they were left alive, they did not feel like survivors, cases of children not being allowed to play in the street, in case it upset other parents.
What happened at Aberfan on 21 October 1966 left an indelible mark on the valleys of south Wales. Even today, the name Aberfan evokes sadness and contemplation. Most British people born before 1960 remember what they were doing when they heard the tragic news.
The community suffered a second devastating blow with the closure of Merthyr Vale Colliery, Aberfan’s main employer, in 1989
The sores and wounds of this tragedy are now forever engrained in the memories and feelings of the people of Wales because of the whole collective loss of a generation that was wiped out.There are thousands upon thousands of Welsh people with personal or family connections to the coal industry, and for them the disaster is not simply something that happened in another time and another place. It is part of their own family history. So today again we try not to forget the children and adults who died, this human tragedy, that many say could easily have been prevented.
The disaster also summed up the relationship Welsh society has with its coal mining heritage. At one level, there is an immense popular pride in the work miners undertook and the sacrifices they endured. There is also a recognition that it was coal that made modern Wales. Without it, communities such as Aberfan would not have existed at all. Indeed, the knowledge that it was their labour that created the waste above the village added guilt to the grief felt by some bereaved fathers.
Aberfan is now known today as one of one of Wales worst mining disasters in it's history,but brought back memories of the pit disasters of Senghennydd (1913 - 439 killed) https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/10/senghennyd-mining-disaster-lest-we.htmland Gresford (1934 - 263 killed) https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/09/gresford-colliery-disaster.html
and the numerous less-known accidents that killed and maimed individual miners. Such fatalities continued to occur in the wake of 1947 but miners accepted the dangers inherent in their occupation. Aberfan however was different. This time it was their children that were killed, and by implication, a part of the future was lost, because of mans greed. It is important to note that no employee of the NCB was ever disciplined for the breaches that caused the disaster.
Now pupils in Carmarthenshire will hold a minutes silence every year on 21 October after councillors recently passed a motion. The chairman of Aberfan Memorial Charity said it was of "great comfort".
David Davies added: "The bereaved, the injured, the survivors and the wider community have always been touched that our fellow citizens in Wales, the UK and indeed around the world have not forgotten what happened in Aberfan.
"That wider empathy swept into our community like a huge wave of loving support most recently in 2016 and the 50th anniversary."
He added the annual silence "is a huge and ongoing source of great comfort to all concerned".
Here is an evocative poem written at the time by local poet Ron Cook.
Where Was God - Ron Cook
Where was God that fateful day
At the place called Aberfan.
When the world stood still and the mountain
Moved through the folly of mortal man.
In the morning hush so cold and stark
And grey skys overhead.
When the mountain moved its awesome mass
To leave generations of dead.
Where was God the people cried
Their features grim and bleak.
Somewhere on their knees in prayer
And many could not speak.
The silence so still like something unreal
Hung on the morning air.
And people muttered in whisper tones
Oh God this isn’t fair.
The utter waste of childhood dreams
Of hope and aspirations.
A bitter lesson to be learnt for future generations
But where was God the people cried.
The reason none could say
For when the mountain moved its awesome mass.
God looked the other way.
At the place called Aberfan.
When the world stood still and the mountain
Moved through the folly of mortal man.
In the morning hush so cold and stark
And grey skys overhead.
When the mountain moved its awesome mass
To leave generations of dead.
Where was God the people cried
Their features grim and bleak.
Somewhere on their knees in prayer
And many could not speak.
The silence so still like something unreal
Hung on the morning air.
And people muttered in whisper tones
Oh God this isn’t fair.
The utter waste of childhood dreams
Of hope and aspirations.
A bitter lesson to be learnt for future generations
But where was God the people cried.
The reason none could say
For when the mountain moved its awesome mass.
God looked the other way.
