40 Years Ago.

C

Colin Phillips

At the Start
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Dec 22, 2003
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Talbot Green
Forty years ago this morning a colliery waste tip moved down the mountainside above the school in Aberfan and engulfed part of the school and a row of houses, wiping out almost a complete generation of children from that village.

The price of coal.
 
I watched some of the programme about it last night. I was 11 years old, in P7 at the time and we spent a lot time at school praying for the victims and their families. It was very clear last night how profoundly this affected the people. They couldn't talk about it 40 years laters without welling up. So sad.
 
There was an article about this on BBC news last week. I just found it so sad as soon as the name of the village was mentioned, it conjured up to me just one thing, that horrific disaster all those years ago.
 
Unimaginable. What those people went through. There can be nothing worse than losing a child, especially one you thought was in a place of safety at school.
 
I was living in the UK at the time, in Cornwall, and my Mother and I were just rocked by that news. Everyone seemed to be sad and quiet the next day, on the buses, in the streets, and everyone was talking about it, especially as Cornwall still had a few active mines then. The manner of death seemed so appalling, especially as the kids were killed in the sort of landslip that had killed many a miner in the past.
 
And as with every disaster, it was soon followed by the usual spate of sick jokes, eg What's big and black and goes to school?
 
A few years younger than Dessie, but the memory of the TV news still stays with me. I remember watching RTE News with me Ma, and the sense of Horror watching mothers srcraping at the coal with their bare hands looking for their kids is still with me.
 
My good mate in work told me this week that his father attended the Aberfan school (Pantglas) at this time. He happened to be late for school that day and was the only survivor of the children, his friends, in his class. That must be an incredibly painful burden to bear.
 
We used to have a Spring Bank Holiday time cricket tour to the Rhondda and one midweek game was rained off. Some of us went to Aberfan and saw the memorial. It was very moving.

The decision announced by George Thomas, Welsh secretary in the Wilson government at the time of the disaster, that the cost of removing the remaining tips around Aberfan would have to be met, not by the NCB, or even the taxpayer, but by the charitable fund set up to aid victims of the disaster was disgraceful. The Aberfan families themselves were appalled and they weren't alone.

Protestors descended on the Welsh Office en masse. George Thomas had no option but to back down partially. In the end, there was a compromise whereby the fund instead of paying the full cost (£235,000) of removing the tips gave £150,000 towards it.

In 1997, when Mr Tony came to power, at least the £150,000 was handed back to the fund. But that's exactly how much was given back with no allowance for inflation. The equivalent value in 1997 of £150,000 in 1966 was around £1.5 million.
 
Can someone pit up the Alun george photos please. And if i've got that wrong hunt round for them?
 
Originally posted by MarkEE@Oct 20 2006, 09:28 PM
My good mate in work told me this week that his father attended the Aberfan school (Pantglas) at this time. He happened to be late for school that day and was the only survivor of the children, his friends, in his class. That must be an incredibly painful burden to bear.
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There must be a horrendous guilt attached to being a survivor. I did wonder how many of the children actually survived.

The news footage of those hundreds of volunteers trying to locate survivors with their bare hands is absolutely heart wrenching. :(
 
It is hard to imagine the incomprehensible grief which must have engulfed the people of that village. Totally unimagineable.

The events, outlined by Brian H, which pre-empted and then followed the disaster are just as incomprehensible. Despite it being common knowledge that the tips were unsafe (the schoolmasters had even reported their concerns) nothing was done. And then, in the wake of the disaster, to fund the removal of the tips with money donated to the families seems an act of wanton cruelty.

The whole episode is one of the most shameful in recent British history (and there are plenty of them).

My heart goes out to anyone who suffered loss on that truly awful day.
 
I'd no idea about the money for the families going on removing the tips, or the witholding of the final payment for so long, or it being finally donated at a 40-year old rate. I'm appalled. Sometimes - if not most times - politics just makes you want to puke. Could the British government have been more heartless? It's the sort of thing we'd be wagging sanctimonious fingers about at a foreign despot, not our own country.
 
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