Aberfan.

       In the morning of October 21st. 1966, darkness fell on a small village in Wales, on that day, half the children in Aberfan ended their short lives under a mountain of coal slurry. This was no unavoidable accident, nor some "weird act of god", this was death by industrial quest for profit, and gross neglect of its duty of care. Something that should never been allowed to happen and was avoidable.

 The following extract from Wikipedia:

         The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a collieryspoil tip in Wales on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. A period of heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and other buildings. The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board (NCB), and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees.
        There were seven spoil tips on the slopes above Aberfan; Tip 7—the one that slipped onto the village—was begun in 1958 and, at the time of the disaster, was 111 feet (34 m) high. In contravention of the NCB's official procedures, the tip was partly based on ground from which water springs emerged. After three weeks of heavy rain the tip was saturated and approximately 140,000 cubic yards (110,000 m3) of spoil slipped down the side of the hill and onto the Pantglas area of the village. The main building hit was the local junior school, where lessons had just begun; five teachers and 109 children were killed in the school.
        An official inquiry was chaired by Lord JusticeEdmund Davies. The report placed the blame squarely on the NCB. The organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was criticised for making misleading statements and for not providing clarity as to the NCB's knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside. Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined. 

         

 

          This of course was not the first or the last mass deaths from industrial drive for profit, nor will it ever be the last as long as profit is the driving force for industry.

        Sometimes these avoidable disasters hit suddenly and with mass deaths, Aberfan, Bhopal, but other times that same drive for profit kills much slower and over many many years, the asbestos disaster that is still with us today as people still die from the results of working with this slow killer. These deaths are nothing short of industrial murder.

         Avoidable industrial deaths will continue to blight the lives of millions of ordinary working people as long as industry is driven by the capitalist model of profit, with profit comes avoidable deaths. Not until we the ordinary workers take over the production of all goods will the health and welfare of the people be at the forefront of all working conditions.    

         Until that day we will have to live with more Abefans, Bhopals and Mesothelioma.

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Aberfan, 52 Years And Hearts Still Bleed.

      October 21st. 1966 was a day of horror that took an nation to a dark place, that's the day that is remembered as the Aberfan tragedy. It was a cold damp morning that started as countless other October mornings had begun, but is now etched into the consciousness of the mining communities and beyond.  A day that took the lives of 116 children and 28 adults, from one small village in Wales. 

     A tip of coal mine slurry dumped on the side of a mountain, and on top of a stream and it grew and grew. On that fateful wet October morning, just after the kids had entered school, it started its unstoppable rush down the mountainside, fast and furious, like an unstoppable runaway locomotive. It encompassed cottages on the way down, before coming to a halt as it swamped and encased the junior school and all those inside. 

     Mining communities are well accustomed to tragedy, but what marks this one out is the fact that it mindlessly terminated the lives of 116 children, all innocent victims of a nation's greed for cheap coal.

This from the BBC:

 “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

     The phrase is one of the most enduring and quoted of modern literature, an almost proverbial reference to the archaic and bygone.
      It is the opening line of LP Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go-Between, an eerie story set 50 years on from a tumultuous experience of an adolescent boy; an experience so devastating it propelled him prematurely into adulthood and ruined the rest of his life.
      The story of what happened in the south Wales mining village of Aberfan is a devastating one which dealt a similar fate to the children who survived it.
       It too is a story for which Hartley’s opening line could not be more pertinent.
       It is exactly 50 years since tragedy swooped down on Aberfan killing 116 children and 28 adults.
        Revisiting the "obscenity" of 21 October 1966, and its aftermath is a stark reminder of the incongruities of the past.
     Health and safety, counselling, accountability, litigation, compensation – at times met with derision – are the tenets of our modern day.
      Aberfan is an upsetting reminder of perhaps why and how much our society changed so much in little over a generation.

Continue reading HERE:

 The mistake that cost a village its children. 

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk