Aberfan

[CadiFfan]

Please, just for one minute this morning, close your eyes and think of those who lost their lives and their families

❤️

I watched the documentary yesterday, it was very moving. The politicians all came across as pompous, unfeeling wankers especially the head of the NCB. I am pleased that their memories are tainted through documentaries like this.

Aberfan has always had a big impact on me. The scale of the tragedy and the absolute avoidable nature of it makes it heartbreaking.

I can’t imagine how a community could ever move on from the events.

I listened to a series on BBC Sounds last year. I don't know if it's still available but it was very moving.

There was a documentary about it on Monday on BBC2 which will be on iPlayer if anyone wants to catch up on it. It’s absolutely shocking. Those poor families. So unlucky, one day later would have been half term and most likely nobody would have been killed at the school. So awful 💔

Indeed. It's disgraceful that nobody was made to take any official responsibility for it.

I remember it so clearly. I came home from school and found my mum sobbing in the kitchen, and csn still remember the terrible TV footage.

Aww. So sad. My ex's Aunt died at Aberfan. She was named after her.

Can you tell me where you watched the documentary please @JimBobsWife ?

I was 5 so didnt really understand the magnitude of what had happened but I remember my parents talking about it and my mum standing at the front gate talking with the neighbours about it x

There was one made some years ago because I remember watching it and seeing a lady who had been a child caught up in the horrific events visiting the graves of her little classmates. It affected me profoundly. I wasn't born when it happened but I heard about it as a child and it has affected me since.

When I was a kid we had some cyclopedia type book with world events calendar. I did what every kid probably would have done, I looked up my birthday. And was really surprised that this awful event wasn't mentioned anywhere else. It is only in recent years that there's been anything on TV about it.
It must have been incredibly distressing for very many people. The kind of intergenerational pain that is hard to forget but harder to talk about.

The absolute horror.

I was at primary school and lived in a pit village (in England), our teachers cried, our parents cried, every family was just numb and rigid with horror.

I can feel my chest tightening and eyes welling up thinking about it.

For the families: thoughts forever,

Yes, it was on the BBC, I can't recall which channel I'm afraid but I'm sure you'll find it easily on iPlayer.

Apparently they had been told so to claim no-one knew is disingenuous.

They had their own rules about where the tips could be based - not on a hill, not above 20m and not near a spring. They ignored all of these rules.

💔

It was a bit before I was born, but I was always aware of it I remember vividly watching a programme about it at school, some of the same footage as is in the BBC documentary which I watched earlier this week (it is on Iplayer). I also listened to the BBC Sounds podcasts a few years ago and found them deeply moving. Thinking of the families today.

I remember my grandfather, not directly involved but just horrified as everyone else must have been, 20 years later still being angry at Robens who was head of the NCB.

I think more so because he was a man from a similar background and area to us which made his reactions even worse as he absolutely should have understood that community, apologised unreservedly and taken his share of the blame.

My mum was in her 20s when it happened and apart from the obvious horror remembered Cliff Michelmore, who was unflappable, being so upset by it which really brought it home even more.

It was obviously such an accident waiting to happen as well. Whether they knew about the mountain streams or not, look at the bloody average rainfall in Wales and the obvious effect on coal slurry!

This is why it annoys me when people look at the past with rose coloured spectacles and H&S gone mad. The sheer bloody-minded arrogance of the coal board and politicians at the time was absolutely disgusting. And they way they talked about the mothers of the kids who died being hysterical and so on and that they made them pay towards the mountains of slurry to be removed out of the charitable collection bloody beggars belief and was illegal.

Robens was an absolute arse. He had himself certified as medically unfit to fight in WW2 and schemed to become PM at one point. And George Thomas showing himself to be the slimy git he was,

I watched that documentary on Monday and thought 'so much for Labour, the party of the working class.'

My mum was in her 20s when it happened and apart from the obvious horror remembered Cliff Michelmore, who was unflappable, being so upset by it which really brought it home even more.

Michelmore was such a assured anchor and rather genial, to see him that upset (which I didn't remember from the coverage at the time) was intensely emotional

The way the people were treated by the NCB and the government afterwards was utterly appalling. Good on the woman who tipped a bag of coal
slurry on the First Ministers desk.

My dad (not Welsh) has always admired George Thomas. Having seen that documentary the other day, I can’t imagine why. As a child of a mining village himself, he should have done better.

I feel like it’s something we haven’t collectively processed at all, it was always spoken about in hushed tones as so horrific I don’t think people have the words. God knows the unimaginable effect on the families and community. Thinking about them today.

I agree, it makes their reactions even worse somehow. Total betrayal.

There was a very moving documentary a few years back - I remember they interviewed a mother whose daughter hadn't wanted to go to school that day and she'd made her go in, and another who had argued with her daughter that morning because she wanted to wear her new shoes to school. Tiny little everyday things that will have stayed with them forever. They also talked to a woman who had been a pupil but had stayed home that day, and was the only surviving child in her street. Just unimaginable.

So heartbreaking