9.13am

Alun Smith

I could list all the instances of tragedy connected with the Welsh mines. I could give you numbers of deaths registered for each pit, for each town and village, in each century, each decade, since the men, and too often the children, of Wales first went underground.

Since the dawn of the industrial age, since Wales and the Welsh first started fuelling the machines that would drag the world into its brave new era, there are stats and figures, cold facts and colder memories of accidents, incidents, injuries and death.

I could list them all but I’m not going to. You can do that yourselves. It’s all recorded, written up, preserved and filed in a document of the deceased. A dossier of disease, decay and dismissal. And for what? What a price Wales has paid for her endeavour, her loss, her despair.

Wales should be a wealthy nation now. It isn’t and that’s nothing short of a travesty, an outrageous betrayal of the people of Wales by money-men, managers, ‘owners’ and grifters who are not of this soil. Coal, steel, slate and water. We were blessed and they took it.

They took it and they dismissed us. Never again, Wales. I know many of you will disagree with my views on an independent Wales and you will further disagree with me when I draw parallels between the right-wing ideologies of Reform and the Tories and the way those pit and quarry ‘owners’ saw the world.

Many mining disasters could have been avoided had those owners shown the slightest concern for the people of this land, for their ‘workers’, and for the wives, sons and daughters of those men. Reform and the Conservatives are no different. That is my belief and I will not be moved from it. They keep proving it.

England doesn’t care. The UK doesn’t care. Millionaires, billionaires and the culturally devoid, worshippers of the almighty sterling, don’t care. The ugly sisters of Westminster and Windsor don’t care. We can trudge along behind the decrepit institutions of the past, exhausted from centuries of hard labour, rubbing our two pennies worth of a pay cheque together in our pockets or we can bite through the leash, remember who we were, who we are, and break free.

Disaster

There is one disaster that monstrously illustrates my point. One that, I feel, has left a scar on the hearts of the people of Wales more than any other. This one I will list. Because the majority of those who died were children. Children between the ages of 7 and 11.

What happened on October 21, 1966 to the village of Aberfan near Merthyr will live in tragic infamy in the hearts and minds of not just the people of that village but in the hearts and minds of every progressive, and every mam and dad in every corner of the world. It is a trauma shared that will never be halved or even diminished.

The National Coal Board (NCB) built a ‘spoil tip’ 111 feet high on top of a natural spring. A natural spring that was directly above Pant Glas school. When it rained, the spoil turned to slurry and slid down the hill, engulfing the school and several nearby houses. At 9.13am, the mass of slurry, and the negligence of the NCB, killed 116 children and 28 adults. One hundred and forty-four souls.

‘Misleading’ statements

Lord Robens, the chair of the NCB, made ‘misleading’ statements about his organisation’s knowledge of the presence of the spring. They knew and they knew it would rain. It’s Wales, for goodness’ sake.

It took a week to clear the slurry. The last victim was found a week later on October 28.

No one was ever prosecuted. No one was criminally charged and no one was even demoted. Never again, Wales. The people of Wales have more than earned the right to make the decisions that manifest their destiny. No more ‘owners’, no more managers, no more money-men, no more interference.

The poem below is my small testament to the children, their teachers and families and to a village incomplete.

ABERFAN

“Nos da you happy summertime voices, cwtch you down in autumn’s blackened shawl.
Sleep sound you little Lords and Ladies of the hill, no lessons more, no more in thrall.

Nos da your giggles and your tantrums, goodnight and up the wooden hill. Mam and dad will see you in the morning, and see you every morning…still.

Nos da the valley’s song of children, too hard in nine and thirteen time, goodnight you future pitmen, goodnight your loves sublime.
We will remember you always, beneath the hated mountain, practising your language, your scripture and your counting.

Nos da the little children, the price of all that coal, the cost of industry’s fires and to fill the fat man’s bowl.

Nos da Cariad, Rwy’n dy garu di.”

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