Aberfan disaster

Aberfan disaster

Aberfan in the days immediately after the disaster, showing the extent of the spoil slip
Date	21 October 1966 (1966-10-21)
Location	Aberfan, Glamorgan, South Wales
Coordinates	51°41′41″N 3°20′51″W
Deaths	144 (28 adults, 116 children)
Inquiries	Lord Justice Edmund Davies
Resulted in the passing of the Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act 1969

The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, that killed 116 children and 28 adults on 21 October 1966. The collapse was caused by the build-up of water in the accumulated rock and shale tip, which suddenly slid downhill in the form of slurry.

More than 1.4 million cubic feet (40,000 cu metres) of debris covered a section of the village in minutes. The classrooms at Pantglas Junior School were immediately inundated; young children and teachers died from impact or suffocation. Many noted the poignancy of the situation: if the disaster had struck a few minutes earlier, the children would not have been in their classrooms, and if it had struck a few hours later, they would have left for the half-term holiday.

The official inquiry blamed the National Coal Board (NCB) for extreme negligence, and its chairman, Lord Robens, for making misleading statements. Parliament passed new legislation regarding public safety in relation to mines and quarries.

In 1966 the Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund (ADMF) received 90,000 contributions, totalling £1,606,929. The remaining tips were only made safe after a lengthy fight by Aberfan residents who were resisted by the NCB and Labour Government of Harold Wilson. Clearing was paid for by a government grant and forced contribution of £150,000 taken from the charity fund. In 1997 Tony Blair's New Labour Government paid back the £150,000 to the ADMF and in 2007 the Welsh Assembly donated £1.5 million to the fund, as recompense for the money wrongly taken.

Background

Aberfan

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Aberfan, Mid Glamorgan

Aberfan is situated towards the bottom of the western valley slope of the Mynydd Merthyr hill in the Taff Valley, approximately four miles (6.4 km) south of Merthyr Tydfil. When the Merthyr Vale Colliery was sunk on 23 August 1869 by John Nixon and partners at a time Aberfan consisted of two cottages and an inn frequented by local farmers and barge men. By 1966 its population had grown to approximately 58,000. Since the nationalisation of the British coal industry in 1947, Aberfan's colliery had been under the control of the National Coal Board (NCB). The River Taff runs south-to-north through the village; at the upper side of the settlement, on the western outskirts, a disused canal bed alongside an unused railway embankment run parallel to the river. In between the Taff and the former railway line lies Aberfan.

The first spoil from the coal mine was deposited on the lower slopes, east of the canal, but during the 1910s the first tip was started on the valley's western slopes, above the canal line and the village. By 1966 there were seven spoil heaps, comprising approximately 2.6 million cubic yards (2 million m³) of waste. Numbers 4 and 5 are conical mounds at the apex of the slope; the remaining five are lower down; all are directly above the village. Tip 7 was the only one being used in 1966. At approximately 111 feet (34 m) high, it contained 297,000 cubic yards (227,000 m³) of spoil, which included 30,000 cubic yards (23,000 m³) of tailings. This was waste from chemical extraction of coal; tailings consisted of fine particles of coal and ash, which took on the similar properties to quicksand when wet.

The Aberfan Colliery spoil tramway in 1964, with spoil heaps at top left. The red brick building at mid-left is Pantglas County Secondary School.

The stability of tips is affected by water conditions. Tips 4, 5 and 7 were also situated on streams or springs. The presence of the springs was common knowledge in the area, and they had been marked on the Ordnance Survey and Geological Society maps since 1874. Tip 4 at Aberfan, which had been used between 1933 and 1945, was large, and had been started on boggy ground between two streams. At the time of its planning, the Merthyr Tydfil borough engineer thought that despite the position, it would be unlikely to avalanche. Following some ground movements in the tip in the early 1940s, a drainage channel was dug in spring 1944. In November that year part of the tip slid 1,600 feet (490 m) down the mountain to stop approximately 500 feet (150 m) above the town. In May 1963 tip 7 shifted slightly; in November that year there was a more substantial slide. The NCB stated that the movement had not been a "slide", but was instead a "tailings run", a run-off of tailings from the surface of the tip, which left its stability unaffected. As a result of the slide, the NCB decided to stop tipping tailings on number 7, but normal spoil continued to be deposited there.

Mynydd Merthyr is in an area of relatively high rainfall, an average of 60 inches (1,500 mm) a year (in 1960 it was 70.5 inches (1,790 mm), the heaviest of recent years in the run up to the disaster). Between 1952 and 1965, there was severe flooding in Aberfan on at least 11 occasions. Residents complained that the flood water was black and left a greasy residue when it receded. Complaints had been made by residents to Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, who entered into correspondence with the NCB between July 1963 and March 1964 on the topic of the "Danger from Coal Slurry being tipped at the rear of the Pantglas Schools". In early 1965 meetings were held between the council and the NCB at which the Board agreed to take action toward the clogged pipes and drainage ditches that were the cause of the flooding. No action had been taken by October 1966.

Tip collapse

File:Aberfan disaster - extent of the spoil slip.jpg

The extent of the spoil spill (shown in grey, within dotted lines)

During the first three weeks of October 1966 there was 6.5 inches (170 mm) of rainfall, nearly half of which was in the third week. During the night of 20–21 October the peak of tip 7 subsided by 9–10 feet (2.7–3 m) and the rails on which the spoil was transported to the top of the tip had fallen into the hole. The spoil movement was discovered at 7.30 am by the first members of the morning shift manning the heaps.

At 9.15 am a significant amount of water-saturated debris broke away from tip 7 and flowed downhill at 11–21 mph (17–34 km/h) in waves 20–30 feet (6–9 m) high. G. M. J. Williams, a consultant engineer who gave evidence at the subsequent tribunal, stated that the 9.15 am movement

... took part of the saturated material past the point where liquefaction occurred. This initially liquefied material began to move rapidly, releasing energy which liquefied the rest of the saturated portion of the tip, and almost instantaneously the nature of the saturated lower parts of Tip No. 7 was changed from that of a solid to that of a heavy liquid of a density of approximately twice that of water. This was 'the dark glistening wave' which several witnesses saw burst from the bottom of the tip.

Approximately 140,000 cubic yards (110,000 m³) of spoil was deposited in the slip's pathway down the mountain, where two farm cottages were destroyed, killing the occupants; around 50,000 cubic yards (38,000 m³) was estimated to have travelled across the canal and railway embankment and into the town, consisting 500,000 tonnes (490,000 long tons) of material. The flow destroyed two water mains buried in the embankment and the additional water further saturated the spoil.

The slide struck Pantglas Junior School on Moy Road, demolishing and engulfing much of the structure and filling classrooms with thick mud, sludge and rubble; five teachers and 109 children were killed in the school. The pupils of Pantglas Junior School had arrived only minutes earlier for the last day before the half-term holiday, which was due to start at 12.00 pm. The teachers had just begun to record the children's attendance in the registers when the landslide hit. The senior school was also damaged; 18 houses on the road were destroyed by the slide. Mud and water from the slide flooded many other houses in the vicinity, forcing many villagers to evacuate their homes. Once the slide material had been brought to a halt, it re-solidified. A huge mound of slurry up to 30 feet (9.1 m) deep blocked the area. Investigating the damage to the secondary school immediately after the slide, its acting headmaster found that

The Girls' Entrance was approximately two-thirds to three-quarters full of rubble and waste material ... I climbed onto the rubble in the doorway ... when I looked directly in front of me ... I saw that the houses in Moy Road had vanished in a mass of tip-waste material and that the Junior School gable-ends, or part of the roof, were sticking up out of this morass. I looked down to my right and I saw that the Moy Road houses had gone.

Rescue efforts and retrieval of the bodies

File:Rescue of a young girl at Aberfan, 21 October 1966.jpg

The rescue of a young girl at Aberfan; no survivors were found after 11.00 am

After the landslide stopped, local residents began digging through the rubble, moving material by hand or with gardening equipment. At 9.25 am Merthyr Tydfil police received a phone call from a local resident that said "I have been asked to inform that there has been a landslide at Pantglas. The tip has come down on the school"; the fire brigade, based in Merthry Tydfil, received a call at about the same time. Calls were then made to local hospitals, the ambulance service and the local Civil Defence Corps. The first miners from the Aberfan colliery arrived within 20 minutes of the disaster, having been raised from the coal seams where they had been working. They directed the early digging, knowing that unplanned excavation could lead to collapse of the spoil and the remnants of the buildings; they worked in organised groups under the control of their pit managers.

The first casualties from the wreckage of the school arrived at St Tydfil's Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil at 9.50 am; the remaining rescued casualties all arrived before 11.00 am: 5 adults and 22 children, one of whom was dead on arrival. A further 9 casualties were sent to the East Glamorgan General Hospital. No survivors were found after 11.00 am. Of the 144 people who died in the disaster, 116 of them were children, mostly between the ages of 7 and 10. Five of the adults who died were teachers at the school. There were also 6 adults and 29 children injured.

The 10.30 am BBC news summary led with the story of the accident. The result was that thousands of volunteers travelled to Aberfan to try and help, although their efforts often hampered the work of the experienced miners or trained rescue teams.

With the two broken water mains still pumping water into the spoil in Aberfan, the slip still moved through the village, and it was not until 11.30 am that the water authorities managed to turn off the supply. It was later estimated that the mains added between 2 and 3 million imperial gallons of water (9.1 to 14 million litres) to the spoil slurry. With movement in the upper slopes still a danger, at 12:00 pm NCB engineers began digging a drainage channel, with the aim of stabilising the tip. It took two hours to reroute the water to a safer place, from where it was diverted into an existing water course.

An NCB board meeting that morning, headed by the organisations chairman, Lord Robens, was informed of the situation. It was decided that the company's Director-General of Production and its Chief Safety Engineer should inspect the situation, and they left for the village immediately. In his autobiography, Robens stated that the decision for him not to go was because "the appearance of a layman at to early a stage inevitably detracts senior and essential people from the tasks upon which they should be exclusively concentrating". Instead of visiting the scene, that evening Robens went to the ceremony to invest him as the chancellor of the University of Surrey. Cledwyn Hughes, the Secretary of State for Wales, visited the scene at 4.00 pm for an hour. He phoned the Harold Wilson, the prime minister, and confirmed Wilson's own thought that he should also visit. Wilson gave Hughes any powers he thought necessary to deal with the situation and told hime to "take whatever action he thought necessary, irrespective of any considerations of 'normal procedures', expenditure or statutory limitations. Wilson arrived at Aberfan at 9.40 pm, where he heard reports from the police and CD and visited the rescue workers. He and Hughes agreed that a high-level independent inquiry needed to be held; Wilson left Aberfan at midnight.

A makeshift mortuary was set up in the village's Bethania Chapel from 21 October until 4 November 1966, 250 yards (229 m) from the disaster site; members of the South Wales Police force assisted with the identification and registration of the victims. Two doctors examined the bodies and issued death certificates; the causes of death were typically asphyxia, fractured skull or multiple crush injuries. Cramped conditions in the chapel meant that parents could only be admitted one at a time to identify the bodies of their children. The building also acted as a missing persons bureau and its vestry was used by Red Cross volunteers and St John Ambulance stretcher-bearers. 400 embalmers volunteered to assist with the cleaning and dressing of the corpses; a contingent that had flown over from Northern Ireland has removed the seats of their plane to transport child-size coffins. The smaller Aberfan Calvinistic Chapel nearby was used as a second mortuary from 22 to 29 October prior to burial of the bodies.

Lord Robens

Chairman of the National Coal Board, Alfred Lord Robens, was a senior union official in the 1930s and a Labour MP who became Minister of Power in the final days of the Attlee Labour government. His actions immediately after the disaster and in the years that followed have been the subject of considerable criticism. When word of the disaster reached him, Robens did not immediately go to the scene but went ahead with his investiture as Chancellor of the University of Surrey. He did not arrive at the village until Saturday evening. NCB officers covered up for him when contacted by the Secretary of State for Wales, Cledwyn Hughes, falsely claiming that he was personally directing relief work when he was absent.

When he reached Aberfan, Robens told a TV reporter that nothing could have been done to prevent the slide, attributing it to natural unknown springs beneath the tip, a statement the locals challenged. The NCB had been tipping on top of springs that were clearly marked on maps of the neighbourhood, and where villagers had played as children.

Robens' evidence to the Tribunal of Inquiry was unsatisfactory; so much so that the NCB's counsel in its closing speech asked for Robens' evidence to be ignored. Robens took a very narrow view of the NCB's responsibilities regarding the remaining Aberfan tips. His opposition to doing anything more than was needed to make the tips safe, even after the Prime Minister Harold Wilson had promised villagers the tips would have to go, was overcome only by a grant from the government and a bitterly opposed and much resented contribution from the disaster fund of £150,000, nearly 10% of the money raised.

Aftermath

The traumatic effects of the disaster were wide-ranging and profound, as first-hand accounts gathered by Iain McLean and Martin Johnes indicate. During the rescue operation, the shock and grief of parents and townspeople were exacerbated by insensitive behaviour from the media – one unnamed rescue worker recalled hearing a press photographer tell a child to cry for her dead friends because it would make a good picture. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Aberfan on 29 October to pay their respects to those who had died. The Queen received a posy from a three-year-old girl with the inscription: "From the remaining children of Aberfan". Onlookers said she was close to tears.

Anger at the NCB erupted during the inquest into the deaths of 30 of the children. The Merthyr Express reported that there were shouts of "murderers" as children's names were read out. When one child's name was read out and the cause of death was given as asphyxia and multiple injuries, the father said "No, sir, buried alive by the National Coal Board". The coroner replied: "I know your grief is much that you may not be realising what you are saying" but the father repeated:

I want it recorded – "Buried alive by the National Coal Board." That is what I want to see on the record. That is the feeling of those present. Those are the words we want to go on the certificate.

A social worker later noted that many people in the village were prescribed sedatives but did not take them when it was raining because they were afraid to go to sleep, and that surviving children did not close their bedroom doors for fear of being trapped. A doctor reported that although an expected surge in heart attacks did not occur, the trauma manifested itself in other ways – the birth rate went up, alcohol-related problems increased, as did health problems for those with pre-existing illnesses, and many parents suffered breakdowns over the next few years.

Many people suffered from the effects of guilt, such as parents who had sent children to school who did not want to go. Tensions arose between families who had lost children and those who had not. A surviving school child recalled that they did not go out to play for a long time because families who had lost children could not bear to see them, and they felt guilty that they had survived.

A study into the disaster's long-term psychological effects was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003. It found that half the survivors suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at some time in their lives, that they were more than three times more likely to have developed lifetime PTSD than a comparison group of individuals who had experienced other life-threatening traumas, and that 34% of survivors who took part in the study reported that they still experienced bad dreams or difficulty sleeping due to intrusive thoughts about the disaster.

Davies Inquiry

Main article: Aberfan Disaster Tribunal

On 26 October 1966, after resolutions in both Houses of Parliament, the Secretary of State for Wales appointed a tribunal to inquire into the disaster. It was chaired by Lord Justice Edmund Davies, who was born and brought up locally. Before the tribunal began, the Attorney General warned the media that comments on matters to be investigated by the tribunal could lay them open to the same consequences as contempt of court. The tribunal sat for 76 days; the tribunal report thought "much of the time of the Tribunal could have been saved if ... the National Coal Board had not stubbornly resisted every attempt to lay the blame where it so clearly must rest — at their door".

The tribunal retired on 28 April 1967 to consider its verdict, publishing its report on 3 August. This stated in its Introduction

"... our strong and unanimous view is that the Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented. ... the Report which follows tells not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure in communications. Ignorance on the part of those charged at all levels with the siting, control and daily management of tips; bungling ineptitude on the part of those who had the duty of supervising and directing them; and failure on the part of those having knowledge of the factors which affect tip safety to communicate that knowledge and to see that it was applied."

The tribunals findings were that:

I. Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board. This blame is shared (though in varying degrees) among the National Coal Board headquarters, the South Western Divisional Board, and certain individuals.

II. There was a total absence of tipping policy and this was the basic cause of the disaster. In this respect, however, the National Coal Board were following in the footsteps of their predecessors. They were not guided either by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries or by legislation.

III. There is no legislation dealing with the safety of tips in force in this or any country, except in part of West Germany and in South Africa.

IV. The legal liability of the National Coal Board to pay compensation for the personal injuries (fatal or otherwise) and damage to property is incontestable and uncontested.

The disregard of the NCB and the colliery staff for the tip's unstable geological conditions and its failure to act after previous smaller slides were found to have been major factors that contributed to the catastrophe. No blame lay with Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council or the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

Compensation

The NCB paid out £160,000 in compensation: £500 for each fatality, plus money for traumatised survivors and damaged property.

Consequences for NCB and its personnel

If we are going to make pits safer for men we shall have to discipline the wrongdoer. I have no sympathy at all for those people—whether men, management or officials—who act in any way which endangers the lives and limbs of others.

— Lord Robens, addressing the NUM conference in 1963

The NCB as an organisation was not prosecuted: not until passage of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was it possible for an organisation to be found guilty of corporate manslaughter as a result of serious management failures resulting in a gross breach of a duty of care. Nine senior NCB staff were named as having some degree of responsibility for the accident and the tribunal report was scathing in its criticism of evidence given by the principal NCB witnesses. Witnesses to Tribunals of Inquiry were effectively immune from prosecution, and no NCB staff were demoted, sacked or prosecuted as a consequence of the Aberfan disaster or for evidence given to the inquiry (one notably unsatisfactory witness had been promoted by the time Parliament debated the Davies Report); Lord Robens and the NCB board members retained their positions.

In September 1967, following the report's publication, Robens – after first mobilising support from the NUM, and checking with the government that any offer to resign would be rejected – wrote to the Minister of Power, Richard Marsh, offering his resignation. Although Robens had a combative relationship with the government and several cabinet ministers argued strongly that he should go, the Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Marsh refused to accept Robens's resignation. According to Ronald Dearing, a senior member of staff at the Ministry of Power, who briefed Marsh on the matter, the fact that Robens was "taking the coal industry through a period of painful contraction without big strikes" and the strong support for him within the coal industry and the union movement were crucial to the decision to retain him. In an interview broadcast in 2006, Marsh, described the outcome of discussions with Robens: 'We went through this and I said "Well, you send me in your resignation, and I will send you back a letter saying 'quite understand it, but I don't accept it'"'. The text of Marsh's letter had been agreed with Robens before Robens formally offered to resign.

The Welsh MP Leo Abse said that "when I saw what I regarded as the graceless pavane danced by Lord Robens and the Minister, as the Chairman of the Coal Board coyly offered his resignation and, equally coyly, the Minister rejected the offer, I thought that it was a disgraceful spectacle".

Disaster fund

The public demonstrated its sympathy by donating money with little idea of how it would be spent. Donations flooded in to an appeal initiated by the Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil and within a few months, nearly 90,000 contributions had been received, totalling £1,606,929 (equivalent to £38 million in 2023). Management of the fund caused considerable controversy over the years. The fund was put on a firm legal footing under the auspices of a permanent committee with clear local representation and a trust deed that specified the money was to be used:

1. For the relief of all persons who have suffered as a result of the said disaster and are thereby in need.
2. Subject as aforesaid for any charitable purpose for the benefit of persons who were inhabitants of Aberfan and its immediate neighbourhood (hereinafter called 'the area of benefit') on the 21st day of October 1966 or now are or hereafter become inhabitants of the area of benefit and in particular (but without prejudice to the generality of the last foregoing trust) for any charitable purpose for the benefit of children who were on the 21st day of October 1966 or who now are or hereafter may become resident in the area of benefit.

Many aspects of the aftermath of the disaster remained hidden until 1997, when the British Public Records Office released previously embargoed documents under the thirty-year rule. The documents revealed new information about the actions of Lord Robens, the NCB and the Charity Commission in the wake of the disaster.

At one point the Charity Commission "duty-bound to uphold an outdated and inflexible law", intervened and obstructed payments by the fund to individual victims and for the cemetery memorial. Commission staff considered whether to insist that before any payment was made to bereaved parents, each case should be reviewed to ascertain if the parents had been close to their children and were likely to be suffering mentally. At another meeting, the commission threatened to remove trustees of the disaster fund or make a financial order against them if they made grants to parents of children who had not been physically injured that day, and the trustees were forced to abandon the payments.

"A psychological, emotional danger" – Aberfan Colliery spoil heaps in 1968. Tip 5 is furthest from the camera.

In the Commons debate on the Inquiry Report it was asserted by the Government on the advice of the NCB and supported by comments in the tribunal report that the remaining tips above Aberfan were not dangerous and did not warrant removal (estimated by the tribunal to cost £3 million), but merely required landscaping, a much cheaper option. The assertion was promptly contradicted by the local MP, S.O. Davies; as Margaret Thatcher pointed out the report noted that "One may conclude that No. 5" (tip) "has been standing and is standing at a very low factor of safety." Despite the government opposition, public pressure led to a decision to remove the remaining tips: the Secretary of State for Wales stressed that they were safe but that he knew from contacts with the people of Aberfan "that they constitute a psychological, emotional danger". If the tips were not physically dangerous, Robens saw no obligation on the NCB to pay the cost of their removal. The government made a grant of £200,000 towards the cost of removing the tips, and under "intolerable pressure" from the government, the trustees of the disaster fund agreed to contribute £150,000. At the time, the Charity Commission made no objection to this action, but it has subsequently been criticised as "unquestionably unlawful" under charity law.

Spellbrook Memorial Woodland

An important part of the fund is still alive and running. The disaster committee set up a fund to help pupils and it is still available for pupils from the village or for children whose parents were living in Aberfan at the time of the disaster.

Shortly after the disaster children and staff at the primary school at Spellbrook, near Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, collected £20–16s–0d (£20.80) for trees to be planted on a nearby tip. The forest plantation remains to this day.

Legislation

The white arches in Bryntaf Cemetery, Aberfan, which mark the graves of children killed in the disaster.

As a result of concerns raised by the disaster, and in line with Finding XVII of the Davies Report, in 1969 the British government framed new legislation to remedy the absence of laws and regulations governing mine and quarry waste tips and spoil heaps. The Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act 1969 was designed "to make further provision in relation to tips associated with mines and quarries; to prevent disused tips constituting a danger to members of the public; and for purposes connected with those matters".

The Act was an extension of the earlier Mines and Quarries Act 1954. As the Davies Tribunal had found, the Act did not mention tips in its provisions, the only reference to public safety was a section dealing with fencing abandoned or disused mines and quarries to prevent people falling into them. Under the terms of the 1954 Act, the Aberfan disaster was not required to be formally reported to HM Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries because it did not take place on colliery property and no mine workers had been injured or killed.

To address the problem of safety legislation being largely reactive, health and safety legislation was put on a different footing with the passage of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. It established a catch-all general duty on employers (with a similar clause for the self-employed) "to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety." The Act addressed the recommendations of a committee set up by Barbara Castle to look at modernising UK health and safety legislation. The committee was chaired by Lord Robens.

Subsequent events

Aberfan Memorial Garden in March 2012

Merthyr Vale Colliery closed in 1989. In 1997 the incoming Labour government of Tony Blair repaid to the disaster fund the £150,000 that it had been induced to contribute, by the Labour government of Harold Wilson, towards the cost of tip removal. No allowance was made for inflation or the interest that would have been earned over the intervening period.

On 9 May 1997 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh planted a flowering cherry tree at the Aberfan Memorial Garden. The Queen spoke to the largest ever gathering of survivors and relatives of the victims. Many of them were meeting for the first time since the day of the disaster. The memorial garden is on the site of Pantglas Junior School and includes stone walls to show where the classrooms stood.

In 2005 Imperial Tobacco settled out of court to end a wrongful dismissal suit brought against the company by an Aberfan survivor Janice Evans, who had been employed by Imperial's Rizla cigarette paper factory near Pontypridd. Evans had been sacked after she refused to continue working night shifts, alleging that it had brought on flashbacks of her ordeal in 1966, when she had been buried waist-deep in the landslide while walking to school. Although Evans survived, a friend who had been walking with her was killed.

In February 2007 the Welsh Government announced a donation of £1.5 million to the Aberfan Memorial Charity and £500,000 to the Aberfan Education Charity. No connection was made to the shortfall of the 1997 repayment.

Cultural references

Literature

• Aberfan: Under the Arc Lights a poem by Keidrych Rhys, published in The Spectator, 28 October 1966, reprinted in Best Poems of 1966: Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards: A Compilation of Original Poetry Published in Magazines of the English-Speaking World in 1966, Volume XIX, Pacific Book Publishers, Palo Alto California, 1967.
• Riddle of the Pyramids by Kurt Mendelssohn, 1974, finds a clue to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids in the physics of the Aberfan disaster.
• The Aberfan disaster appears in the plot of David Lodge's novel How Far Can You Go.
• Dagrau Tost: Cerddi Aber-fan (Error: {{language with name/for}}: missing language tag or language name (help)), edited by Christine James and E. Wyn James, 2016, is a collection of over 80 Welsh-language poems written about the disaster during the period 1966–2016.

Music

• "The Aberfan Coal Tip Tragedy", a song by Thom Parrott, included on the Smithsonian Folkways CD set Best of Broadside:1962–1988 (2000).
• "Aberfan", a song by David Ackles, included on his album Five & Dime (1973).
• "Grey October", a song by Peggy Seeger.
• "Sing To My Soul", a song by Welsh musician Martyn Joseph refers to his memories of October 1966.
• "Palaces of Gold", a song by Leon Rosselson, originally recorded for his 1968 album A Laugh, a Song, and a Hand-Grenade and used as the title track for his 1975 album. The song was covered in 1976 by Martin Carthy on his album Crown of Horn.
• "A Mountain Moved", a song by John Sloman. from his album "13 Storeys" 2006.
• "The Price of Coal", a song by Alex Glasgow, which has been sung by artists including Paul Child and David Alexander, references the disaster.
• According to the liner notes for their box-set Tales from the Brothers Gibb (1990), the disaster was the inspiration behind the Bee Gees' song "New York Mining Disaster 1941".
• "Not All The Flowers Grow", a song by Dave Cousins and performed by the Strawbs on their 2001 album Baroque & Roll.
• Cantata Memoria: For the children, a choral work by Karl Jenkins, with libretto by Mererid Hopwood, was written for a memorial concert for the 50th anniversary of the disaster. The work, commissioned by S4C, was performed at the Wales Millennium Centre on Saturday 8 October 2016, before being broadcast on S4C on 9 October. The concert was broadcast by BBC Four on 23 October and featured Bryn Terfel, Elin Manahan Thomas, Catrin Finch, David Childs, violinist Joo Yeon Sir, massed children and adult choirs and Sinfonia Cymru. The work was released as an album by Deutsche Grammophon.
• Aberfan, a television opera by Raymond and Beverly Panell commissioned by CBC television and first broadcast in Canada in 1976. It won multiple Canadian and international prizes and has been broadcast in 22 countries.

Documentary

• Aberfan – The Untold Story a BBC One Wales documentary shown on 14 October 2006, included news reports from 1966, eye-witness accounts 40 years on and some dramatic reconstruction of some of the tribunal proceedings.
• Aberfan: The Fight for Justice, a BBC One documentary on 18 October 2016, included dramatic reconstruction of some of the tribunal proceedings and eye-witness accounts.

Film

• The Green Hollow, a BBC One Wales film which premiered 21 October 2016, the 50th anniversary of the disaster. Subtitled "a poem in the voice of Aberfan", it was written by poet Owen Sheers. Described by Sheers as "a form of verse drama created from first person accounts", it features both actors and members of the Aberfan community.

Notes and references

Sources

• "The Aberfan Disaster, October 1966" (pdf). South Wales Police Museum. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
• Austin, Tony (1967). Aberfan: The Story of a Disaster. London: Hutchinson & Co. OCLC 751632264. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Couto, Richard A. (June 1989). "Economics, Experts, and Risk: Lessons from the Catastrophe at Aberfan". Political Psychology. 10 (2): 309–324. JSTOR 3791650. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Davies, Edmund (1967). Report of the Tribunal Appointed to Inquire into the Disaster at Aberfan on October 21st, 1966. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. OCLC 209323. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• McLean, Iain; Johnes, Martin (2000). Aberfan: Government and Disasters. Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press. ISBN 978-1860-570-339. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• McLean, Iain (January 2009). "Lessons from the Aberfan Disaster and its Aftermath" (PDF). British Academy Review (12): 49–52. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Miller, Joan (1974). Aberfan: A Disaster and its Aftermath. London: Constable. ISBN 978-0-0946-0360-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nield, Ted (October 2016). "Tipping point". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 6 August 2017. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nunn, Charles (16 October 1987). "The Disaster of Aberfan". Police Review: 2069–2071. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Owen, David (2011). South Wales Collieries: Volume 6: Mining Disasters. Stroud, Glous: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-3564-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Petley, Dave (10 October 2016). "Special Report: Aberfan 50 Years On". New Civil Engineer. Retrieved 29 October 2016. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Williams, G. M. J. (1969). "Inquiry into the Aberfan Disaster". In Penman, A. D. M. (ed.). A Selection of Technical Reports Submitted to The Aberfan Tribunal. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. pp. 91–116. OCLC 877759092. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wroe, Jo (27 October 2016). "The unsung heroes of Aberfan". New Statesman. Retrieved 23 August 2017. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children at bbc.co.uk
• Series of photographs of the disaster
• Old Merthyr Tydfil: Photographs of the Aberfan Disaster at alangeorge.co.uk
• British Pathe newsreel footage of the Aberfan disaster aftermath at britishpathe.com
• Johnes, Martin; McLean, Iain (February 2014). "The Aberfan Disaster Archive". Nuffield College, Oxford.
• Welsh Office (1969). Penman, A.D.M. (ed.). A Selection of Technical Reports Submitted to The Aberfan Tribunal. Internet Archive (Report). London: HMSO.
• Aberfan Disaster – a digital resource at Hwb (Digital Learning for Wales) of original items from The National Library of Wales archives including the Ordnance Survey map produced to show the extent of the disaster