Category: Aberfan

Following my posts about Aberfan, my friend David Morgan (the one who walks a lot, mostly up hills and generally quite fast) suggested this series of podcasts from BBC Sounds. I’m currently travelling Italy at the moment, so whilst on a flight to Rome and on trains internally, I’ve listened to the entire series today of nine episodes.

The links to the series is at https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/p09z3n7y.

As a short comment, the way that these families were treated was genuinely shocking. I had realised already that they weren’t respected in the way that they could and should have been, but the treatment was often downright disrespectful. To lose your child and then have to fight to get the tips removed to prevent a re-occurrence, only to discover that it was paid for from the memorial fund is sub-optimal to say the least. Reading old newspapers, it seems that the trustees of the fund begrudgingly accepted the request from the Government to contribute as it was seen to benefit the village, but they shouldn’t have been asked and it was right that the money was later repaid to them.

One of the survivors says that now she’s an adult she simply can’t work out how the families involved coped. Not only did they lose their child, or children, but they faced disinterest and push-back from the authorities in the years that followed. Survivor guilt was also a common theme, how the young children didn’t feel somehow lucky to survive, they were mentally traumatised by what happened and there wasn’t the assistance provided to help them even though some money was made available from the fund.

The worst thing is that no-one was ever held accountable for what happened, there was no-one who lost their job, was demoted or took responsibility for the mistakes that were made. That was what I considered to be the key thing that the locals wanted, they felt that their children had been murdered by the National Coal Board and so they never received the closure that might have helped them deal with the tragedy.

Anyway, they’re definitely worth listening to and the podcasts are well produced.

We had visited the memorial garden at the former Pantglas Junior School before coming here to see the graves of the children who died in the disaster.

This recently restored area of the cemetery is beautiful, it’s visible from the village down in the valley and it creates a commonality between the graves whilst still giving the grieving family and friends the ability to personalise the graves.

The graves of Clive Mumford and Philip Mumford who were aged 11 and 9 respectively. Their parents Edward and Winnie are also buried here reunited once again.

The graves of brother and sister Bobby Minney and Barbara Minney who were aged 10 and 9 respectively. Under normal circumstances, these children would have still been alive today.

It’s all peaceful and dignified.

A list of all of the victims.

Sister and brother Marilyn Minett and Carl Minett, aged 10 and 7 respectively.

The graves with the photos on made it feel more emotional.

Eight year old Joseph Wilkshire. But, there were tens more graves here that I didn’t take photos of, so many stories.

It was all very poignant and I can’t begin to imagine the pain to the families, especially as the inquiry that followed showed huge levels of incompetence and failure at the National Coal Board who operated the coal mine. There’s a little more information about the inquiry at https://glamarchives.gov.uk/blood/Aberfan/. Perhaps it might have been a little easier to at least understand a natural disaster, but this was all man-made incompetence.

Today the views over the valley and the village are beautiful, it’s calm, peaceful and it feels like a different world from the tragedy. But the very visible memorial and the impact of the tragedy will never go away, the missing generation are unlikely to ever be forgotten.

This is the memorial garden in Aberfan located at the former Pantglas Junior School which was destroyed on 21 October 1966 following a landslip at the local coal mine. The tragedy killed 116 children and 28 adults.

Recently restored, this is a beautifully laid out area which is accessible for those with mobility needs.

The tree planted by local schoolchildren to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the tragedy.

The tree planted by the then Prince of Wales.

And the tree planted by Queen Elizabeth II on 9 May 1997. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had visited the site the day after the tragedy, but the Queen took eight days. This wasn’t a mark of disrespect, she wanted to give time for the rescue work to take place and not distract from that.

Martin Charteris, the Queen’s adviser at the time, acknowledged that his advice to the Monarch had been misguided and she should have gone sooner. However, she returned to the village on several occasions and the community always welcomed her warmly.

A really rather beautiful cat came to say hello when we were walking around. Excuse my shoes, that was a legacy of the climbing I’d just done.

There are no information panels at the memorial garden, but I understand that the design attempts to incorporate the former location of the classrooms. Some of the original stone which survived the destruction of the building has been maintained.

The site is peaceful, calm and dignified, it’s hard really to picture the enormity of what happened here. There’s seating for those who want to reflect, where beauty has replaced devastation. There’s a separate memorial at the cemetery in the village which we visited after this.