To remind people of the minute silence

[Famalam13]

Posting here due to traffic.

Today is 50 years since the Aberfan disaster in which 116 children and 28 adults died. A minute silence will be held at 9:15am.

I was pleased to see signs in our local Morrisons this week, they said they'd be stopping what they were doing for a minute and asked customers to join them in a minute of silence. It's about time it was remembered properly to be honest.

Amazed how many mumdnetters hadn't heard of this.

My mum is Welsh though and I remember her crying, I was only 3 but clearly remember her and my gran and great aunt hugging and weeping. It was the first time I had seen an adult cry.

They were from South Wales and I also remember the white hot anger as this wasn't a national disaster and the National coal board ignored repeated warnings about Tip 7.

I was discussing this with my kids last night and how the adults were crying and my 17 year old dd said 'so mum that was your 9/11 because that was the first time I saw you cry.

So so sad! Watched the documentaries and they got me. The woman saying about her daughters shoes and the One keeping her purse..

Then have the whole if happend at this time things could've been different. Then again had warnings been listened to might never have happened! Behaviour of the coal board was alwful before and after

I had just started school. I as nearly 5 when it happened.
The school had prayers for the victims and sensitively explained what had happened. Being from a minig family I knew about mines and the risks but none of us ever expected all those children to die.

We did not have whtie hot anger although plenty of people stopped believing in a God when things like that happen. It just confirmed that bad things can happen and I was a bit too young at nearly 5 to understand it all. I did know how important it was to work at school ho wever as like most people we all hated the mines and the kind of work they represented and we would have thought nothing better than the whole industry disappearing - it exacted far too high a toll on families and we are so much better off without those mining jobs.

My Mum collected us from school in the English midlands that day with tears in her eyes - I was too young to understand it really at the time . Every year I think (especially since having DD) about all the Mums and Dads whose kids never came home. People beyond Wales knew, and still do.

I'm from not far from Aberfan. The tragedy was a few years before I was born, but it has been a huge part of or local history. I remember my late MIL telling me how they listened to it unfold on the radio at the time and my late FIL and Grandfather in law, drove up there to help the rescue mission, but were turned away as there were just so many volunteers. She talked of the almost biblical rain that had fallen in the days previous to the disaster. I work in a primary school now, and cannot envisage the sheer terror they all must have felt, and feel very emotional about the stories of teachers being carried out having tried to protect the children under their care. THE NCB behaved despicably; no one ever lost their job over wha happened. It was almost as if there was a feeling of "they are only working class and Welsh, what does it matter?" It is also shameful that the money taken took so long to be handed back. I have visited the graveyard. It is only when you actually see the rows of white arches over the graves that you can begin to comprehend the numbers involved. I will be thinking of Aberfan today, so many lives changed forever, and the loss of a generation.

I remember it vividly as I was 7 at the time - the same age as many of the children who died. I kept wanting to hide under tables because I was afraid.

So sad.

I'm not surprised so few people know about it - it's only because it's the 50th anniversary that it is getting the coverage that it has. The village of course marks it every year and will continue to do so. I thought about it this morning when my ds went off to his primary school how half of the children of that one village never got to come home again at the end of the day, because it was on the last Friday before half term that it happened, just as it is here today.

Just adding respetect

There was white hot anger at the inquests. Parents refused to accept their children suffocated but rather killed by the Coal Board. Unbelivable no one was prosecuted but yes Utah working class and Welsh so not Importanr.

I remember my mother ranting too about Princess Ann visiting the scene and bringing toys ffs. Someone told her 'there are no children left' what a terrible misjudgment and crass stupidity.

I think there is something amiss with your memory here Dontpanic. Princess Anne was 16 at the time.

You are right about the fury at the inquests though.

My earliest memory was watching the news with men digging in the dark with bare lighting to help. It must have been the next night on TV. I was 4 1/2 in my first term in infants in my Wiltshire school. It was explained but I didn't get the enormity of what was happening. There always seemed to be a lot of harsh things in the news as a child. I kept the silence with respect, least I could have done.

From what I've read of people's feelings at the time, the press should have been less interested in documenting the grief of the bereaved parents and spent more time investigating and pressuring those in power. And let down by a Labour government that was meant to represent them.

Cantata memoria by Karl Jenkins in memory of Aberfan. I don't know if this has been aired on 'English' TV, and although it is on the radio tonight that will lose the heartbreaking images being used behind the singers.

this was the whole concert a lot of it is in Welsh but I think that if you can turn on subtitles they are in English.

It is so sad that despite earlier slips e.g. in Cilfynydd in 1939 where nobody was injured, but a very definite warning of what could happen, practice was not changed.

I knew about Aberfan, but didn't know about the silence. But at 9.15 I was reading the BBC news post about it and silence is the only reaction one can have to it. Watching the programmes shown in the last few days, what struck me most was the dignity shown by the people waiting for news. I couldn't believe that TV cameras had been allowed into one families house to film them as they left for the funeral. And how the cameras were in the face of people still digging.

And yet the press were praised for their gentleness and compassion. A stark difference to the way they operate nowadays.

Conference

Yes just googled it.

My mum told me princess Ann visited and brought toys but in fact the Queen visited 9 days later and brought toys supposedly that princess Ann had given her for the children. I imagine it was meant as a gesture to the surviving children but that act and the delay in visiting the scene caused huge anger and apparently the queen regrets to this day.

I was 7 at the time and I remember our teacher talking about it in school (in Glasgow). Of course I didn't fully appreciate what it meant at the time but I do remember having a collection for the fund. Charity collections at school were a lot less common at the time. I think this was the only one we had throughout my primary years.
I wasn't aware of the NCB responsibility until much later when I lived in Wales and not of the full extent of it until the coverage this year.
So sad and so wholly unnecessary.

Can I add another story.

There were houses crushed too that day and one man lost his wife and 2 small children. An American photographer took a photo of him sat alone in a friends house and called it 'The man who lost everything'

The photo was shown around the world and a young American journalist was so moved she visited the man and they later married and settled in America and had a daughter who later visited the scene as an adult with her dad who hadn't been back since the event.

I grew up in the 1980s in SE England and learnt about Aberfan. I think that everyone should know about it as it was such a tragedy.

My thoughts are with all those who were affected by it.

Both Lord Snowden and Prince Phillip visited shortly after the disaster. There are suggestions that the Queen was advised not to come too soon as it might disrupt the rescue effort.

Quite disgusted that the popular press ( Daily Mail) don't seem to think it is worth covering - and the so called Prince of Wales seems to be conspicuously absent from the memorial events too.

I have family in that part of Wales, it could easily have been one of my cousins who died. A terrible terrible tragedy and one that could so easily have been avoided.

Taken from Wikipedia:

"In 1965 a petition against the tip from mothers of children at Pantglas school was presented by headmistress Ann Jennings to Merthyr County Borough Council. Ms Jennings and many of the petitioners' children died in the disaster."

The parents knew it was dangerous and had petitioned the year before but were ignored. I can't imagine...