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.
