Aberfan

I mean, it was interesting.

I thought it was interesting when Aberfan came up.

Yeah.

Because when you look at Aberfan, I remember, you know, those shocking scenes and I remember the aftermath and the consensus was that this was an accident waiting to happen.

People had, you know, sounded alarm bells and they'd been ignored and then the accident had happened.

That's pretty much the shape of every disaster that we've had.

And I just thought it was interesting that we're still trapped in that cycle.

So that's because

One quick mention finally for a play I actually really love called The Revlon Girl, which is coming back to the Park Theatre at the end of October, 26th October to the 14th November 2021.

This is set in Aberfan, where, of course, the disaster of the coal slippage happened.

And it was first done 10 years ago in 2016, this play.

And I interviewed the playwright Neil Anthony Docking on the Play podcast about this play some time back.

As one reviewer said, "He may elegize, but he doesn't romanticize." And the word earth has entered his writing in different ways, in a kind of ongoing conversation throughout his work.

Owen's account of the Aberfan disaster, The Green Hollow, shows the earth in fatal disarray.

60 years ago this October, a coal tip collapsed and disastrously slid down the valley, killing 144 people, including 116 children in a primary school.

So could we hear you read a short extract, uh, from The Green Hollow, please?

Yeah, sure.

And in a way, I suppose this, uh, sort of picks up from what Jason was saying, in that, so The Green Hollow was based on around seven months of interviews with the, uh, community in Aberfan.

And I was aware straight off that Aberfan is one of those places that has become anonymized by what happened there.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, the ones about Churchill are the best examples.

Churchill stuff, like the Aberfan things.

Yeah, like all of those.

It is weather, it will pass.

Harsh advice.

Oh, by the way, um, does anybody ride? I live in Aberfan, yeah.

Um, just down the road from me is the road house.

Does anybody know me? Right, a word please from me.

Uh, you know, if you were looking for something, you know, kinda terrible that is, for want of a better phrase, like British or kind of embedded in like British cultural consciousness, these kinds of disasters are...

Um, Aberfan is another one that I, I consider looking up, which was when a, a coal mine collapsed in Wales in the 1960s.

Mm.

And, um-

Mm

MmFell on a, a village called Aberfan.

And yeah, I don't know how else to describe it, but it's something like, uh, th- there is this kind of strange, like, history of, you know, like, disasters of this type, I guess.

Yeah.

So you'd have to imagine she would be very comfortable pointing out the shortcomings in other members of the royal family, like Prince Andrew, but as she did at times with Prince Charles and also very much when she was alive, Princess Diana.

In the 1960s, the queen delayed very famously going to the Aberfan mine disaster in Wales that she then came to see as the single greatest failure failure, the single greatest regret of her reign was not acting more quickly to go to those people as their queen.

And she really famously, in her Annis Horribilis speech, which we sort of remember because everyone hated the royal family at that point, the Diana and Charles divorce was going on, it was all over the headlines, the Windsor Castle fire had taken place, and she essentially said that that year was her Annis Horribilis.

But one of the pieces of that speech that is often forgotten is That in it, she said, the monarchy was not above or beyond reproach, that public scrutiny was important and that no institution should be free from challenge in that way and that criticism should act as an engine for change.

In a panic, she senses that the walls are caving in on her, although everything in her bedroom is completely fine.

Around the exact same time, two hundred miles away in the Welsh coal town of Aberfan, Jeff Edwards and two hundred and thirty-nine other students, mostly between the ages of seven and ten, head to the Pantglas Junior School.

And that gloomy Friday morning, they walk through the cold rain, which had been coming down for weeks.

Luckily, students are given a half day for a holiday, so they'll all be let out at noon.

As time went on, they got quieter and quieter as children died.

They were buried and running out of air." Rewind to two hours earlier.

At seven thirty AM, coal miners had arrived at their job site just up the mountain slope from Aberfan.

They noticed that tip number seven, a one hundred and eleven foot spoil tip, a massive pile of waste material removed during coal mining, had shifted.

It's one of those things.

I mean, for me, I would suggest a comparison would be encouraging people to visit Aberfan.

Yes.

Or,

It's bewildering, actually.

And no, you wouldn't have a, no matter what stories went with it, I wouldn't have that in the book.

And no, you wouldn't have Aberfan in the book or the Bradford fighter or whatever like that.

Of course you're not.