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John HumphrysABERFAN Forty years ago I drove along this same road through the Merthyr Valley towards Aberfan. The little terraced houses lining the valley in those days were miner’s cottages – almost all of them. And as I drove past, women were out on their doorstep gazing up the valley towards Aberfan. They sensed that something bad had happened; none of us had any idea how bad. It had been two hours earlier – just after quarter past nine – when a group of workmen were sent to the top of the Big Tip Number 7 that loomed above Aberfan. There had been ominous signs that it was sinking more than usual. A deep depression had formed within the tip, like a crater in a volcano. As the men watched, the waste rose into the depression, formed itself into a lethal tidal wave of slurry and roared down the hillside, gathering speed and height until it was 30 feet high, destroying everything in its path. It crushed part of the school and some tiny terraced houses alongside like concrete dropping on a matchbox, And what that filthy mixture didn’t flatten, it filled; classrooms choked with the stuff until the building was covered and the school became a tomb. The moment the awful news reached them, the miners abandoned the coalface at the colliery that had created that monstrous tip and raced to the surface. And there they were when I arrived, their faces still black save for the streaks of white from the sweat and the tears as they dug and prayed and wept. ...Lord Robens had tried to claim this tragedy was an Act of God... They were digging, of course, for their own children. Every so often someone would scream out for silence and we’d all stand frozen. Was that the cry of a child we’d heard coming from deep below us? Sometimes it was. And some were saved. I saw a policeman carrying a little girl in his arms, her legs dangling down, her shoes missing. She was a skinny little thing, no more than nine years old. Thank God she was alive.The men dug all that day, and all night, and all the next day. They dug until there were no more faint cries, no more hope, but still they kept going. Now they were digging for bodies. I watched over the hours and days that followed as the tiny coffins mounted up in the chapel. There is nothing so poignant as the sight of a child’s coffin. By the end of it there were 116 of them. One hundred and sixteen dead children, twenty-eight dead adults. They’re buried here, altogether, in this cemetery looking down on the village. The sight of so many children’s graves in one spot – a generation of children – still has the power to move to tears and to anger. The NCB and its chairman Lord Robens had tried to claim that this tragedy was an Act Of God. It was not. It was the result of negligence by man. It should not have happened. There will be no more Aberfans. The mines have gone and so have the tips they created. You will find some still who mourn the end of the mining era and the rich culture it spawned, but I never met a miner who wanted his son to follow him down the pit. And as you walk past the graves, Paul Aged nine, Clive aged eleven, and Phillip, his brother, also aged nine, and so on and so on, you know that the price of coal forty years ago was too high. As a teenager, John Humphrys left school to become a reporter on the Penarth Times. He has been a presenter on the BBC's flagship Today Programme since 1987. His most recent book is Lost For Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language. Today is the 40th anniversary of the catastrophe at Aberfan. I woke up this morning hearing John Humphrys reading this. Thanks to the Today Programme for getting back to me to say they were sure John Humphreys "wouldn't mind in the least" me putting it up. Let's hope. You can listen to him reading it here. 5:58 PM - 21/10/2006 - post comment
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