“People often talk of tragedy today as though each new event, each item deemed worthy enough to be news, should usurp what has gone before. Stalin’s quote that the death of one man is a tragedy, a million a statistic is true. Unless that is, in the faceless million is someone you know. So when an event occurs that can affect every single person in a community it surpasses tragedy, it becomes a stain on the history of an area, or of a people.
I have always been intrigued by the Aberfan disaster, not from a ghoulish perspective, but because I spent so much time in the valleys as a child, with relatives who knew people there, who knew people who had lost children or relatives in the disaster. Even in later life as I turned into a man, a girlfriend of mine had a mother who had been a serving policewoman at that time, and was one of the first on the scene.
It struck me from such a young age that what I took for granted in the leafy suburbs of Cardiff where I went to school, though a million miles away from Pantglas in terms of accent, affluence and amenities, was a matter of fate, not a reason to turn up my nose or feel superior. A child is a child wherever they are born, wanting to play, to learn, to love and to do something that should be the most natural thing in the world, grow up.
That this opportunity was denied to so many is something that genuinely moves me, I would go as far as to say at times it even haunts me. A while ago my children were arguing, as all kids do, and they kept saying ‘it’s not fair!!!’. I bundled them into the car and took them to the graveyard to that hillside in Aberfan and we walked amongst the graves, reading the names and the ages of those who had been lost. It served as a stark reminder to me that no, at times life is not fair, but I would rather face the fickle hand of fate than have no more life left to live.
So, as I am prone to do, I wrote, not a historical piece as people far more qualified than I have done this, and I could not hope to emulate let alone add anything new to those annals. I just wrote what I felt.
There is a shadow on that hillside, see? A blight on generations it must span.
There is a shadow on that hillside, see? In a place called Aberfan.
My nation stood and cried as one, as a tragedy occurred
No matter what they tell you now, the truth was never heard.
Above a school a slagheap stood, a risk that all could see
Unless your job was counting coin for the shameless NCB.
The Coal Board refused to listen, to the men born in these hills,
Continuing to pile the waste up, to shave pennies off their bills.
So as the rain poured on that hillside, the ground began to slide
And it fell upon our children’s school and buried them inside.
There was nothing that could save them now, for the Reaper had arrived
His mount a river of slurry, the coal dust as his scythe
It only took a moment, a moment for Pantglas to fall
144 souls heaven gained, but that Coal Board Hell must call.
Miners rushed from every village, their tears lost in labours sweat,
As they dug amongst the ruins, they would toil for hours yet.
There were many people there that day, all digging for their kin
Until their nails were ripped apart, but still they reached within.
They worked with silent dignity and they graced our dead with pride
Laying teachers and their pupils in a line that grew too wide.
There was a fog upon the valley, burnt by a mourning sun overhead,
And as London cried for profit lost, the Welsh began to count the dead.
Times passing offers no reprieve, it could never dull such pain
That a village full of children would never play or laugh again.
They went to school to learn that day, a day in October ‘sixty six
But tragedy awaited them, it was the cruellest of tricks.
Those deaths that day were needless, so much innocence was lost
But that is what will happen when you value safety less than cost.
I hope those kids can hear us still, I hope somehow they know
That they will always be our children, a memory we won’t let go.
There is a shadow on that hillside, see? A blight on generations it must span.
There is a shadow on that hillside, see? In a place called Aberfan.
Main photo credit to William on Flickr. Shared under the Creative Commons licence.
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