50 Years Ago Today

[Millet]

This must have been horrendous for the parents and all involved, so sad.

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-10-21/aberfan-disaster-what-happened-50-years-ago-today/

 

[For want of a better word]

RIP Little cousin David... he was 10 years old.... I was 16.

Harrowing when the facts came out that the mine owners were getting away scot free!
( And I believe the government of the day took funds away from public charitable donations to fund the " clean up".)



NOS DA

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

That Was George Thomas - slimy little man - methodist batchelor who lived with his mam - arse lickling toady for the upper classes - first of the blairites really!
A colleague of SWMBO survivied - finding it hard to cope the last month with all the band wagon jumpers stirring things up.
They never mention the hate mail and death threats the survivors and their families received - funny that.

 

[Millet]

I read something earlier that over £1 million was raised from around the world and the families of the bereaved only received £50 which is shocking if true.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I read something earlier that over £1 million was raised from around the world and the families of the bereaved only received £50 which is shocking if true.

George Thomas decreed that the fund should subsidise the NCB costs by a whopping £250,000, it was eventually reduced it was all repaid a few years ago and Welsh Governemnt awarded them a further million to compensate for lost interest.
The biggest scandal is that not one person was prosecuted (even though the NCB had been warned that the tip was dangerous) and the coroner only took a few minutes to rule it was 'accidental death'

 

[Swarm]

I was born in Trelewis, only a few miles away, I can still remember all the men leaving to help with the digging.
It's the direct hit on the school, so terribly cruel.

 

[pargyle]

I was 16 and living in the middle of a mining community in South Yorkshire we felt the tremors of emotion 250 miles away. We too had slag heaps surrounding our mines and villages and if there was anything good that came out of this tragedy it was the realisation that spoil heaps of this type were incredibly dangerous. Many of the ones in Yorkshire and the other mining counties were reduced or levelled and are now often leisure areas.

The pain of the loss of one young life never goes away ... 116 children dying is impossible to comprehend, all you can do is marvel at the strength and courage of the community - I think, for once, Charlie got it right.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Our local GP Dr Powell God bless him, walked into the Workmen's hall, interrupted the bingo and announced 'all able bodied men - go home, get changed and Derick's bus will pick up everyone at the usual miner's stop to go to Aberfan - and I know who the unfit ones are!' when they got there and he introduced himself and the rest and was told 'no need for a doctor here' to which he replied 'give me a shovel then'

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

We too had slag heaps surrounding our mines and villages and if there was anything good that came out of this tragedy it was the realisation that spoil heaps of this type were incredibly dangerous.

The larges tip with us was Gelliceidrim - it spilled down right into the gardens of the houses on the opposite side of the road to us - and less than 100 yards from the school, I've seen photos taken from the school yard and it's scary - even after work started to make it safe I can just remember (around about 1970) the slurry seeping into the back kitchens of the houses on the square.
Even now, with all made safe it's astounding how close to a lot of houses the tip is/was and the thing still towers over the valley. We still insist on safety surveys every few years and even though it is now a public park and has been renamed Gelliwerdd (the green Grove) it will go by the name of 'the tip' for generations to come

 

[Erichalfbee]

I was 15 and living in relative comfort far away in the Home Counties. We burned goal in our little council house sitting room fire but I never gave its provenance a second thought until that day. Those dreadful scenes on our tele remain with me and this weeks events brought it all back. Another fifteen years later I was married to a journalist who as a young reporter had been sent there as practically his first assignment. He said the tears of grown men and the ringing of spades and picks interspersed with the occasional shout for quiet while they searched for sounds of life nearly made him give up the job. Disgracefully nobody ever held to account

 

[Millet]

Can the decision to blame no one not be re-appealed and investigated again, the same as they do with murderers today who killed or raped many years ago, at the end of the day this is man slaughter at the least IMO but on a large scale, but then again if has anything to do with the Government it would fall on deaf ears.

 

[user 6228]

I remember the collection made at our primary school, there were still collleiries and pit bonks in Lancashire then... I was 9 years old then.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Can the decision to blame no one not be re-appealed and investigated again, the same as they do with murderers today who killed or raped many years ago, at the end of the day this is man slaughter at the least IMO but on a large scale, but then again if has anything to do with the Government it would fall on deaf ears.

The buggers are all dead now - anyway, think it's time to move on, still a lot of raw scars up there and to some the last few weeks of commemoration has been hell again.

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Can the decision to blame no one not be re-appealed and investigated again, the same as they do with murderers today who killed or raped many years ago, at the end of the day this is man slaughter at the least IMO but on a large scale, but then again if has anything to do with the Government it would fall on deaf ears.

I saw a 1 hour Aberfan special presented by Huw Edwards the other night about this tragedy. The then Welsh Minister George Thomas came across as a nasty piece of work but where that tv programme fell down was it did not mention the existing legal framework.

We must not forget that this happened 8 years before the Health and Safety at Work Act and way before the EU produced directives that forced the UK government to make regulations that gave real teeth to Act. If that incident happened today, everybody from 'the tip’ charge-hand to the Mechanical and Civil Engineers at the mine to the regional and national management of the National Coal Board would be in line for prosecution. There would probably be a corporate manslaughter charge as well. The thing about the H&SWA is that the prosecution does not have to prove guilt, the defendant has to prove innocence, so if you’ve got dead bodies, somebody has failed in their duty under the Act.

The tv programme reported evidence given to the Enquiry that the charge-hand regularly covered over springs and small water courses with mine waste and did not think this was dangerous. The two engineers, while having no training in tip management, were the charge-hand’s line managers and neither of them ever visited the tip or gave instructions as to how to proceed. Buried away in the mine’s correspondence files was a memo that gave suggestions for how tips should be managed safely following a serious slip at another mine but neither of the engineers had seen it. There was no national guidelines for the management of tips and the NCB was more concerned about the politics of being a nationalised industry than with the health and safety of their workers and those affected by their operations. The people who were guilty were not bad men - they were just indifferent to the risks.

When something bad happens there are always conspiracy theories but good cock-up beats a conspiracy any day and this was a cock-up par excellence.

It's just such a crying shame that all those innocent children and their teachers had to die to make safe the rest of the mine-waste tips in the UK.

CVB

 

[Millet]

The buggers are all dead now - anyway, think it's time to move on, still a lot of raw scars up there and to some the last few weeks of commemoration has been hell again.

I could not imagine the pain, RIP all

 

[user 6228]

Aberfan and Flixborough changed the world of health and safety.

 

[Millet]

I saw a 1 hour Aberfan special presented by Huw Edwards the other night about this tragedy. The then Welsh Minister George Thomas came across as a nasty piece of work but where that tv programme fell down was it did not mention the existing legal framework.

We must not forget that this happened 8 years before the Health and Safety at Work Act and way before the EU produced directives that forced the UK government to make regulations that gave real teeth to Act. If that incident happened today, everybody from 'the tip’ charge-hand to the Mechanical and Civil Engineers at the mine to the regional and national management of the National Coal Board would be in line for prosecution. There would probably be a corporate manslaughter charge as well. The thing about the H&SWA is that the prosecution does not have to prove guilt, the defendant has to prove innocence, so if you’ve got dead bodies, somebody has failed in their duty under the Act.

The tv programme reported evidence given to the Enquiry that the charge-hand regularly covered over springs and small water courses with mine waste and did not think this was dangerous. The two engineers, while having no training in tip management, were the charge-hand’s line managers and neither of them ever visited the tip or gave instructions as to how to proceed. Buried away in the mine’s correspondence files was a memo that gave suggestions for how tips should be managed safely following a serious slip at another mine but neither of the engineers had seen it. There was no national guidelines for the management of tips and the NCB was more concerned about the politics of being a nationalised industry than with the health and safety of their workers and those affected by their operations. The people who were guilty were not bad men - they were just indifferent to the risks.

When something bad happens there are always conspiracy theories but good cock-up beats a conspiracy any day and this was a cock-up par excellence.

It's just such a crying shame that all those innocent children and their teachers had to die to make safe the rest of the mine-waste tips in the UK.

CVB

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

I agree @charlievictorbravo . Which is not to say that as a saeson I do not understand the rage and continuing pain: I do, I feel guilt and I see how it had an impact on politics. But the world is getting better all the time and part of that is that when you look back in anger things look worse even than they were. And the sad fact is the world gets better only because of horrible, unignorable events like this that highlight that things have to change (as opposed to say sweeps' cancer, which could be ignored for decades and killed more children in horrible ways).

Sully Sullenberger pointed out that flying is so safe now only because every advance had been bought at the price of human life. So, while mourning the whole event, I agree with JBM that raking over it is probably not such a great idea and I would rather trust the verdict of history, which will not be kind.

 

[REDWOOD]

A respectful two minutes silence was held at Swansea's civil centre and guild hall yesterday.

 

[mbc]

The buggers are all dead now - anyway, think it's time to move on, still a lot of raw scars up there and to some the last few weeks of commemoration has been hell again.

This.
But we should keep a fire in our hearts to inform the future and rage against future corporate whitewashes.