Aberfan: the terrible price of putting jobs before lives

SO Davies’s tribunal testimony exposed the cruel dilemma facing Aberfan and the mining communities around it: accept the threat of the tips or risk losing precious colliery jobs. Six decades on, the struggle for justice remains central to the village’s legacy, says ROB GRIFFITHS

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ON THE 59th day of the Aberfan tribunal hearings, as someone familiar with mining engineering from Merthyr Vale colliery to the Donbass coalfield, local MP SO Davies dropped a bombshell.

He had, he admitted, long entertained fears that a tip-slide might reach the village.

When asked by tribunal chair Sir Herbert Edmund Davies why he had not, therefore, taken steps to forestall such an accident, the former miners’ leader replied that he “had to consider the general feelings and desires of the mass of the people in that ward.”

These were, SO added, shared by many of the Merthyr Vale miners themselves. Were tipping on Merthyr Mountain to be stopped or seriously impeded, he had “more than a shrewd suspicion that the colliery would be closed” — an alarming prospect in a valley which had suffered greater unemployment, poverty and migration than almost any other part of Britain.

Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council and the local Labour Party had previously approached the National Coal Board (NCB) about the tips, slides and floods, only to be fobbed off with deceitful assurances.

Yet few people demanded action to stop the tipping, knowing that this could jeopardise more than 800 colliery jobs.

SO’s controversial testimony highlighted the terrible dilemma confronting the people of Aberfan and surrounding villages: tips — or no jobs?

As a result, he came under fire from those who, like himself, had barked but without too much bite. The tribunal and the local NUM joined the critics, even suggesting that he bore some responsibility for the calamity for failing to act upon his fears.

Time has been kinder to SO since then. Much-respected Welsh broadcaster Vincent Kane told a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster: “The question that dances around the episode of SO Davies’s testimony is not whether he understood the grave implications of what he was saying but whether they, the tribunal, understood the grave implications of what he was saying and, if they did, is that why they closed their ears and refused to accept it?”

The system had put the people of Aberfan, the miners of Merthyr Vale and their representatives in a cruel dilemma: that they either accept the menacing tips or risk losing a major source of employment.  

Rather than recognise this dilemma and comment upon it, the tribunal chose to ignore it.

In the meantime, communities around the world expressed their solidarity with the people of Aberfan. The Disaster Fund reached almost £2 million (or £48m in today’s money), although the Charity Commission intervened to challenge and delay some of its disbursements.

For its part, after refusing to pay any compensation to victims’ families for six months, the NCB made what it regarded as a “generous offer” of £500 to the parents of every dead child. It had initially considered paying the princely sum of £50.

This brought no relief to 45-year-old Kathleen Jones. A neighbour found her dead under the bedclothes, clutching a photograph of her daughter. Susan, aged 11, had perished in Pantglas and her mother had been prescribed sedatives throughout the two years since.

As the coroner explained: “She wanted the photograph near her … as her only solace and comfort.”

Although work had quickly begun to decapitate and stabilise Tip No 7, villagers still awoke to the sight of others looming on their horizon. A campaign to clear all the tips completely gathered pace.

Local residents visited secretary of state George Thomas at the Welsh Office in Cardiff, tipping slurry on his furniture and the steps outside in disgust at the Labour government’s refusal to go beyond safety work.

The NCB estimated the cost of complete removal at £750,000, to which it would contribute no more than £250,000. The government pledged the same. But the people of Aberfan and the Disaster Fund were then asked to stump up the rest.

In the end, the fund trustees were brow-beaten into donating £150,000 towards the clearance programme (repaid by the Labour government in 1997 — with no accounting for interest or inflation).

SO Davies promptly resigned his trusteeship in disgust at the antics of the NCB, prime minister Harold Wilson and Welsh secretary Thomas. In March 1970, he boycotted the local council’s ceremony to award Wilson the freedom of the borough.

The local Labour Party retaliated by deselecting him, only to see Davies win the seat with a majority topping 7,000 in the June 1970 general election, standing as an independent socialist at the age of 89.

By then, the people of Aberfan and Merthyr Tydfil were turning their struggle for survival and dignity into one for the reconstruction of a local community and its communal spirit. Houses, roads and schools were rebuilt, the Aberfan & Merthyr Vale community centre opened in 1973 and a beautiful Memorial Garden now stands on the site of the old Pantglas Junior School.

Today, we also know from official papers released 30 years later that Lord (Baron) Robens’s attempted resignation as NCB chair after the tribunal report was part of a contemptible charade.

He not only drafted his own letter — he also drafted the reply from energy minister Richard (later Baron) Marsh turning it down.  

And the people of Aberfan? They will never forget the disaster that befell their village in 1966. The pain endures, the callousness of the ruling class and its system still grates, but their working-class pride outshines all.

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