tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/aberfan-32213/articlesAberfan – The Conversation2023-10-12T17:11:41Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2123162023-10-12T17:11:41Z2023-10-12T17:11:41ZSenghenydd colliery disaster: how Britain’s worst mining tragedy revealed the true price of coal<p>Miners working at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, south Wales, were in the middle of their morning shifts 2000ft below the ground when a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18610076">massive explosion</a> ripped through the deep pit at 8.10am. A spark from an electric bell had ignited a deadly mix of methane gas and coal dust, known to miners as “firedamp”. </p>
<p>The blast on October 14 1913 killed 439 men and boys, with another dying during rescue operations. It was, and remains, the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/census/pandp/places/seng.htm">worst</a> coal mining disaster in British history and also the sixth worst in the world. </p>
<p>But disasters of this dreadful nature occurred with dismal regularity in the south Wales coalfield when the industry was at its height. South Wales was the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582420/">most dangerous</a> coalfield in what was statistically the most dangerous industry in the UK at that time. </p>
<p>Only a few miles away from Senghenydd, 290 miners had died in an explosion at the <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/albion-colliery-mining-disaster-cilfynydd-16135285">Albion Colliery</a> in Cilfynydd in 1894. The Universal Colliery had itself suffered an earlier explosion, in <a href="https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/accidents-disasters/glamorganshire/universal-colliery-explosion-senghenydd-1901/">1901</a>, which killed 81 miners. </p>
<p>Everyone in Senghenydd lost family or friends in the 1913 disaster. It left 542 children fatherless and made widows of more than 200 women. Ninety boys and young men aged 20 or less were killed, with the youngest victims being just 14 years old. One chapel in the village reportedly lost 60% of its male members. </p>
<p>Although Senghenydd bore the brunt of the tragedy, its deadly effects were also felt further afield. A sizeable minority of the miners who were killed lived in the neighbouring village of Abertridwr and other nearby villages, while ten lived as comparatively far away as Cardiff. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ancestry.co.uk/c/uk1911census">1911 Census</a> shows a large number of families and individuals from every part of Wales living or lodging in Senghenydd. It also shows that many of those who were killed in the disaster had come to the village from England and some from Ireland.</p>
<h2>Justice?</h2>
<p>From the perspective of mining families, the official investigations into the disaster added insult to injury. The coroner’s inquest into the disaster returned a verdict of <a href="https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/accidents-disasters/glamorganshire/universal-colliery-explosion-senghenydd-1913/">accidental death</a>. </p>
<p>Following the inquest, the colliery’s manager was prosecuted for 17 breaches of the Coal Mines Act, while the company was charged with four breaches. But most of those charges ended up being dropped. </p>
<p>The manager was eventually fined a total of £24 and the company was fined £10 with £5 and 5 shillings costs. As the Merthyr Pioneer newspaper <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/4000499/4000502/27/senghenydd%20disaster%201914">reported</a>: “Miners’ lives at 1s 1¼d each” –- the equivalent of 5.5p per dead miner in today’s money.</p>
<p>The Universal Colliery went back to work at the end of November 1913. It eventually closed in 1928 and the derelict site was demolished in 1963.</p>
<p>In 2013, on the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-24506122">100th anniversary</a> of the disaster, the <a href="https://www.visitcaerphilly.com/en/senghenydd-national-mining-memorial-garden/">Welsh National Mining Memorial</a> was unveiled on the old colliery site, to commemorate miners killed in the Senghenydd disasters and also to remember the victims of the other 150 mining disasters in Wales. </p>
<p>Hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects and to view the unveiling of the memorial. The scale of the public turnout to the commemoration showed the extent to which the people of the south Wales valleys are still aware of the terrible toll of death and injury that the industry inflicted upon its workforce.</p>
<p>The memorial statue itself depicts a rescue worker helping an injured miner. Surrounding the statute is a walled garden, with tiles inscribed with the details of those killed in the two Senghenydd disasters as well as a “path of memory”, which marks other colliery tragedies in Wales.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A Channel 4 news report from the 100 year commemoration.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Although the disaster was <a href="https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2013/10/11/the-mining-disaster-at-the-universal-colliery-in-senghenydd-south-wales-14-october-1913/">widely reported</a> at the time, it faded from memory for most people and is not well known beyond Wales by now. </p>
<p>It is possible that this was due to it being eclipsed by the outbreak of the first world war less than a year later. Or perhaps it was because there were just so many colliery disasters that memory of it merged into a broader, vaguer memory of death and danger in the coalfields. </p>
<h2>Remembering</h2>
<p>Although the collieries are all long gone now, mining disasters continue to retain a contemporary resonance in the folk memory of the south Wales coalfield region. </p>
<p>This was seen in <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/coal-spoil-tips-landslide-safe-17826953">popular responses</a> to a coal tip landslide in Tylorstown in 2020, which is just 11km away from Senghenydd. It was reflective of the visceral horror at the <a href="https://aberfan.walesonline.co.uk">Aberfan disaster</a> of October 1966, in which 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a coal tip slid downhill onto a primary school. </p>
<p>Such latter-day commemoration, as often as not via social media nowadays, is perpetuated by people who in many cases have no personal memory of these disasters –- yet nevertheless, we remember. The people of the valleys have never forgotten that coal was always stained with blood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Curtis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Four hundred and forty men and boys were killed in the Senghenydd colliery disaster, with the youngest victims aged just 14 years old.Ben Curtis, Historian, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2012832023-03-07T00:15:46Z2023-03-07T00:15:46ZThe red and yellow sticker dilemma – how do we balance safety with the desire to return home after a disaster?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513825/original/file-20230306-30-emvs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C0%2C4316%2C2882&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just over a month after the Auckland flood, and three weeks on from Cyclone Gabrielle hitting the North Island, the scale of the disasters and the rebuild is clear – as is a sense of being in limbo for those worst affected.</p>
<p>At Muriwai on Auckland’s west coast, locals were reportedly left <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/03/muriwai-residents-frustrated-with-the-uncertainty-around-when-they-can-go-home.html">frustrated by a lack of information</a> after a community meeting called by Auckland Council last week. So far, 113 homes have been “red-stickered” in the small settlement, with another 75 along Domain Crescent yet to be assessed due to the street’s ongoing instability.</p>
<p>At the centre of it all sits <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2004/0072/latest/DLM307300.html">section 124</a> of the New Zealand Building Act. This is the piece of law governing the red or yellow notices (“stickers”) pasted onto houses or buildings deemed “dangerous, affected, or insanitary”. </p>
<p>The situation now playing out at Muriwai provides a case study of the kinds of “pinch points” the use of section 124 can create for territorial authorities and their communities. The lessons learned should inform future disaster responses.</p>
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<h2>Listen to the science</h2>
<p>Ultimately, councils want to keep people safe. But there can be tension when communities feel the risk from a hazard has diminished enough for them to return home and pick up their lives. Not least are concerns that a red sticker on the front of their house is an invitation to thieves. </p>
<p>Talk of “shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted” or “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” is often heard in the aftermath of a natural disaster. The storm has passed, the sun is shining and people want to return to what might seem a more benign environment.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/landslides-and-law-cyclone-gabrielle-raises-serious-questions-about-where-weve-been-allowed-to-build-200250">Landslides and law: Cyclone Gabrielle raises serious questions about where we've been allowed to build</a>
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<p>But what is “safe” is vague, and everyone has their own interpretation of risk – including engineers. Some parts of Aotearoa recover faster than others, and councils have different ways of operating. So it’s important local authorities make balanced decisions by prioritising the science.</p>
<p>In Gisborne in November 2021, for example, widespread <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/455378/gisborne-cleans-up-after-floods-and-landslides">landslides occurred</a>, including a substantial slip involving several residential streets. This transitioned into an earthflow, with the most mobile material probably characterised as mudflow.</p>
<p>Contractors quickly installed concrete blocks at the toe of the slope to stop any more debris sliding onto the road (see picture below). Disruption to the community was kept to a minimum.</p>
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<span class="caption">Aftermath of the Hill Road landslide in Gisborne, November 2021: concrete blocks were quickly placed at the toe of the slope to stop remobilisation of landslide debris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Martin Brook</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Avoiding extremes</h2>
<p>There are other examples, however, of government agencies and councils failing to keep people safe – or being over-zealous in their approach to hazard management and community safety.</p>
<p>Most infamously perhaps, in 1966 at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster">Aberfan</a> in South Wales a saturated pile of coal “spoil” slumped and flowed down the valley side. The result of no effective monitoring at all, the slide engulfed a primary school and killed 144, including 116 children. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/massive-outages-caused-by-cyclone-gabrielle-strengthen-the-case-for-burying-power-lines-199949">Massive outages caused by Cyclone Gabrielle strengthen the case for burying power lines</a>
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<p>Still in the UK but the other end of the scale, the Cumbria County Council acted very quickly in 2021 when <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-58080261">cracks appeared</a> in the soil at the end of a hot summer at Parton on the Cumbria coast. The council <a href="https://cumbriacrack.com/2021/08/06/parton-landslip-villagers-returning-home-and-road-now-open/">evacuated the village</a> for more than a week, and the local school was only reopened 14 months later. </p>
<p>A klaxon warning alarm was installed as a precaution, but the geotechnical investigation showed there had actually been no recent movement of the slope at all. The “tension cracks” were more likely shrinkage cracks due to the soils drying out, not from tensional stresses within an unstable slope.</p>
<p>Both examples demonstrate the importance of understanding the true stability of a slope. Monitoring can be done by remote sensing from helicopter-borne <a href="https://www.neonscience.org/resources/learning-hub/tutorials/lidar-basics">LiDAR</a> (as at Muriwai at present), or space-borne <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/insar-satellite-based-technique-captures-overall-deformation-picture">InSAR</a>. But knowing what is happening to a slope means being able to see, in high resolution, its physical behaviour over time.</p>
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<h2>The technology exists</h2>
<p>A good example of <a href="https://www.bgs.ac.uk/case-studies/hollin-hill-landslide-observatory-yorkshire-landslide-case-study/">state-of-the-art monitoring</a> is the ALERT system pioneered by the British Geological Survey at the Hollin Hill landslide test site in North Yorkshire. This uses ground surface markers, with a variety of motion and listening sensors installed below in geotechnical boreholes at different depths within the slope.</p>
<p>Monitoring moisture is often the key, as rising soil moisture is often the precursor to any measurable slope movement. The installed sensors stream data directly to a geologist’s office computer, providing the basis for science-based decision-making. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-temporary-flood-levy-on-higher-earners-would-be-the-fairest-way-to-help-pay-for-cyclone-gabrielle-200705">Why a temporary flood levy on higher earners would be the fairest way to help pay for Cyclone Gabrielle</a>
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<p>The international mining industry has also pioneered the monitoring of unstable slopes within open-pit mines. A land-based radar unit is pointed at a slope and provides measurements in real time to a control room. Trigger levels are set so that movement beyond certain allowable thresholds raises an alarm and the pit floor is evacuated. </p>
<p>A classic example of its effectiveness is a <a href="https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/24/1/article/i1052-5173-24-1-4.htm">landslide at Bingham Canyon Mine</a> in Utah in 2013. When radar detected slope movement above the acceptable thresholds, more than 100 workers were evacuated. A 60 million cubic metre rock avalanche occurred the next day. It was the largest non-volcanic landslide recorded in the US, and no one was harmed.</p>
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<span class="caption">A large landslide threatens houses in the coastal suburb of Muriwai following Cyclone Gabrielle on February 14 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>Finding the balance</h2>
<p>Getting the balance right isn’t easy. Councils struggle to keep communities safe (recognising there is no such thing as zero risk) while also involving those communities in key decisions. It’s a dilemma local authorities and government agencies wrestle with across most OECD countries.</p>
<p>An approach to planning and mitigation of hazards based on <a href="https://ourlandandwater.nz/about-us/te-ao-maori/">te ao Māori</a> (the Māori world view) has been advocated, but it’s yet to be determined how this would play out across the Aotearoa’s varied communities and cultures.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/build-back-better-sounds-great-in-theory-but-does-the-government-really-know-what-it-means-in-practice-200514">'Build back better' sounds great in theory, but does the government really know what it means in practice?</a>
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<p>But based on Muriwai’s experience, an agile and empathetic approach seems important. This would involve community participation in local hazard planning, coupled with rapid installation and application of state-of-the-art monitoring technology.</p>
<p>Anxious communities recovering from tragic events need to feel they are being listened to. Engaging them in the decision-making process – as well as demonstrating the science behind those decisions – is vital. This is especially so when people’s homes and lives depend on the application of section 124 of the Building Act.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Brook receives funding from MBIE, Toka Tū Ake EQC, and the Royal Society Te Apārangi. </span></em></p>The ‘stickering’ of houses under section 124 of the Building Act, and decisions about when it’s safe to return, need to be informed by science. Affected communities should be involved at every stage.Martin Brook, Associate Professor of Applied Geology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648622016-10-20T15:12:19Z2016-10-20T15:12:19ZRemembering Aberfan<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-aberfan-disaster-is-just-one-facet-of-the-welsh-coal-tragedy-66880">Aberfan disaster of October 1966</a> is one that will never be forgotten in Welsh – or indeed British – memory. It is five decades since the coal tip which stood on a mountain above the Welsh town, engulfed a junior school, killing 144 people – including 116 children.</p>
<p>At the time, most news was reported through a lens of Welsh tradition, to soundtracks of male voice choirs, as cameras panned over dirty faces and terraced houses. The media has since been criticised for being “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/17/aberfan-how-a-gullible-and-deferential-press-failed-the-victims">mostly gullible and deferential</a>”, towards victims. It failed to fulfil its duty as <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/aberfan-50-years-on-how-11973335">watchdog for the people of Aberfan</a>, and question the claim by the state-owned National Coal Board that the incident had happened due to a “critical geological environment”, instead focusing on the tragedy of the situation.</p>
<p>Now, the local and national press will commemorate the event in a different way. Those who were lost will be remembered, <a href="http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&sa=t&ct2=uk%2F0_0_s_2_0_t&usg=AFQjCNHv6KA2_w2pJ2A1JQ_kRhkyiP5OVA&did=be04f53722a38e75&cid=52779245060507&ei=zVYHWMCcNZOfWOq8jkg&rt=STORY&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mirror.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-news%2Faberfan-disaster-survivor-finally-meets-9073883">the efforts of rescuers</a> will be praised once more, while other reports focus on the injustice of the event and the failure of the national boards and government bodies to <a href="http://www.researchcatalogue.esrc.ac.uk/grants/R000222677/outputs/read/d6015f72-9697-4ef3-932a-e9cf2f6dca5b">quickly and adequately respond</a>.</p>
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<p>The media is often criticised for its topicality – its tendency to forget yesterday’s story in favour of the newer and more sensational event that happens today. But, in fairness, the media is also a vehicle for the formation and construction of collective memory. French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs wrote that memory is a collective act of people engaged in <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo3619875.html">remembering together for a purpose</a> – and it is often the media which plays an important role in the construction of both the collective and individual memory. According to American communications professor Barbie Zelzier, memory needs journalism to construct “one of the most <a href="http://mss.sagepub.com/content/1/1/79.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">public drafts of the past</a>”. Without the media to document events as they happen, it can be difficult to collate a shared experience, as we forget and confuse our own stories with those we have heard as time moves on.</p>
<p>For historians and other interpreters the memory constructed by the media’s past can be another country. The task of the journalist is to make sense of the present, build connections between the public and the personal, suggest inferences, create stories, define the magnitude and impact of an event, and <a href="http://mss.sagepub.com/content/1/1/79.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">ground it in a universal message</a> – as well as telling “the truth” of what happened. </p>
<p>Journalists are supposed to provide continuity and the maintenance of cohesion in society. This function informs the construction of stories which emphasise cause and effect, effect and responsibility, the heroes, the rescues and the coming together of communities in the face of disasters. Indeed, survivors of the Aberfan tragedy have described how coverage of the events <a href="http://www.mediaandmemory.co.uk/themes/aberfan.php">strengthened their Welsh identity</a>.</p>
<p>Looking at other tragedies, injunctions such as “<a href="http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/09/however_upsetting_we_must_neve.html">we must never forget 9/11</a>” worked to bind a nation, situate goodness and evil (for some), and represent the past through the lens of the present. Though it must be said 9/11 was on a much larger scale, with more global shockwaves and repercussions than Aberfan – the role of the media was basically the same. The mythic element of a story means that the journalist has to make sense of an event, so a disaster has to have meaning, be a search for truth, or as in the Aberfan story, make sense of the disaster by allocation of responsibility – in this instance, according to the official inquiry, it was the <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/aberfan-no-end-of-a-lesson">uncovering of “bungling ineptitude”</a> on the part of the National Coal Board. </p>
<h2>Collecting memories</h2>
<p>The media frames the remembering – but also contributes to the memory. What do people remember? Is it the pictures in the media or the event itself? Fact and fiction, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520206205">reality and its representations blur</a>.</p>
<p>In this fairly new world of social media, nothing can be forgotten and the old institutions that once framed how events were remembered by everyone are being replaced by a new “mass” – the “small media” of phones and the internet, where people as well as journalists can post, like, mix and circulate content. Does this mean that what is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/memories-in-the-digital-age">remembered will be different</a> – or that how things are remembered will change? Certainly, the man on the street won’t have the same fact-checking processes and official sources that a traditional journalist would, leading at worst to footage that may be wrongly attributed to an event, or made-up quotes and witnesses.</p>
<p>The transition to “new media” is much debated. It has been said that <a href="http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/36/6/745.extract">we cannot discount the influence</a> of the socio/political contexts in which the media is embedded, but what is clear is that the older technologies are holding their own. For breaking news, the people and the media refer to sites like Twitter and Facebook for reaction and commentary, supplementing their own official reports. New media can react quickly, posting within seconds of an event, where old is left with time to confirm and verify.</p>
<p>The question that all media, both old and new, has to contend with now is whether we should be allowed to forget tragedies such as Aberfan: either because we want to – or need to. Are some traumas too painful to remember? By remembering can we move on – indeed where do we move on to? It has been asked whether the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/september-11th-attacks-twin-towers-world-trade-center-attacks-america-memorial-people-killed-muslim-a7238911.html">endless memorials for 9/11</a> are doing more “harm than good” in that by only remembering certain facts we “spawn further division”. But if we do not remember, we often cannot move on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Harris receives funding from
We received a grant of £2000 from the City Region Exchange to fund the conference</span></em></p>Press, television and radio can shape our memories of events - but is this a good thing?Janet Harris, Lecturer, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/668802016-10-14T09:16:40Z2016-10-14T09:16:40ZThe Aberfan disaster is just one facet of the Welsh coal tragedy<p>On October 21, 1966, a coal tip on the hillside above the town of Aberfan in south Wales collapsed, creating a <a href="http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/home2.htm">tidal wave of slurry</a> that descended on to houses and a primary school below. 144 people were killed, 116 of whom were children.</p>
<p>Across the world, there was a sense of shock and horror; a disaster fund quickly raised £1.75m to help the community. Many also wrote <a href="http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/Condol.htm">letters of sympathy</a>, some 50,000 of which survive today. The writings show how mothers who had lost children in accidents or illness and people from other coal mining communities felt particularly touched by the Welsh disaster. People with Welsh relatives, backgrounds or even just holiday memories wrote of the warmth of the nation and its people. </p>
<p>Media coverage at the time contributed to the idea that this was a Welsh event rather than purely local one, partly because it needed to describe where Aberfan was. But <a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/aberfan-valley-of-sorrow/">newsreels</a> and other reports added to this by employing Welsh narrators, choral music and references to the <a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/this-is-tragedy">nation’s tragic history of mining accidents</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1lzJLww3DvM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>For a few, the events had a political edge, and the disaster took place at a time when Welsh nationalism was beginning to become a serious political force. In parliament, Gwynfor Evans, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36772269">Plaid Cymru’s newly-elected MP</a>, claimed that the government’s response would have been stronger <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/oct/26/aberfan-disaster">had the tip collapsed on Hampstead, in London, or Eton</a>. </p>
<p>The security of Labour’s hold on south Wales and the <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/martin-johnes/echoes-injustice">government’s shameful marginalisation</a> of the village’s needs after the disaster meant he was probably quite right. Indeed, the disaster played a key role in convincing some in Wales that both the nationalised coal industry and Labour governance were no longer operating in the interests of the working-class communities they were supposed to represent. </p>
<p>This did not mean they saw Welsh nationalism as the solution, and Evans’ claim that the disaster might not have happened at all had Wales had its own coal board was less convincing. Nonetheless, there continues to be people who see the disaster as another example of English mismanagement of Wales.</p>
<h2>Cultural significance</h2>
<p>More common than interpreting Aberfan through the lens of Welsh nationalism is a continuing sense that the disaster is a part of a distinct national history. Even the Welsh national football squad <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-37610811">visited the memorial garden</a> in October, a recognition of both their own and the disaster’s cultural significance to the Welsh nation.</p>
<p>Such gestures are more than simply the product of Welsh national identity. In a small and mobile nation, it is <a href="http://www.mediaandmemory.co.uk/themes/aberfan.php">not difficult to find people</a> whose relatives lived in Aberfan or were among the hundreds who went there to assist in the rescue operation. Similarly, there are thousands upon thousands of Welsh people with personal or family connections to the coal industry, and for them the disaster is not simply something that happened in another time and another place. It is part of their own family history. </p>
<p>The disaster also sums up the schizophrenic relationship Welsh society has with its coal mining heritage. At one level, there is an immense popular pride in the work miners undertook and the sacrifices they endured. There is also a recognition that it was coal that made modern Wales. Without it, communities such as Aberfan would not have existed at all. Indeed, the knowledge that it was their labour that created the waste above the village added guilt to the grief felt by some bereaved fathers.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1312&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1312&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1649&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1649&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141260/original/image-20161011-12017-ug1swo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1649&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1909 report of the death of a child in a Rhondda tip slide.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Coal’s community price</h2>
<p>Aberfan was just one example of the huge environmental and human cost that coal extracted, and which represented the other side of coal’s significance for the Welsh people. Mining polluted landscapes and, as a 1909 news report showed, 1966 was not even the first time a coal tip slipping had killed a child in Wales. </p>
<p>Nor was Aberfan even close to being the deadliest accident experienced by the industry in Wales. Communities across the coalfield suffered pit disasters; in 1913 an <a href="http://your.caerphilly.gov.uk/abervalleyheritage/1913-pit-disaster">explosion at Senghenydd</a>, near Caerphilly, killed as many 439 men and boys. By the 1960s safety underground had improved, but in that decade alone 429 miners were killed in accidents in south Wales. Aberfan was, of course, different to nearly all other mining accidents in Wales, befalling mostly innocent children at school not those in the pits, but the tragedy it evoked was all too familiar. </p>
<p>The Aberfan disaster led to a gradual but significant programme of clearing land given over the colliery waste heaps and the tragedy played a part in the greening of the mining valleys again. But coal has not yet been consigned to the past. Nothing has replaced the scale of jobs that it created and Aberfan looms close in Welsh memories because large parts of Wales have yet to find a new economic future. </p>
<p>Coal mining itself might be gone but the economic impact of the failure to replace it is everywhere in the south Wales valleys. Just as Aberfan was let down by the government in the 1960s, it, and mining communities across Wales, continue to feel let down by the authorities. The tragedy of coal is multifaceted and that makes Aberfan as much a part of the Welsh present as the Welsh past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Johnes' research on the Aberfan disaster was funded by the ESRC.</span></em></p>The 1966 event that killed 144 people in a small Welsh town is still shaping national identity today.Martin Johnes, Reader in History and Classics, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/525592015-12-23T09:20:27Z2015-12-23T09:20:27ZThe life and death of King Coal<p>The reign of King Coal is a story which is central to fully understanding modern Britain. Coal powered the industrial revolution, employed over a million miners at the industry’s height, shaped and sustained communities across the country, and has played a key role in the UK’s political economy. With the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/kellingley-colliery-miners-march-in-final-farewell-to-the-last-coal-mine-and-british-mining-a6780301.html">closure of Kellingley colliery</a>, the country’s last deep mine, in December 2015, a defining chapter in British history comes to an end.</p>
<p>Although it had been mined in small quantities in Britain since Roman times, the story of coal as a major industry begins with the industrial revolution. From the 18th century onwards, demand for coal began to grow at an increasing rate. Several factors drove this, but its most important uses were as a fuel for steam-powered engines, in ironworks and metal smelting, and for domestic energy consumption in growing cities and towns. Then in the 19th century, coal grew to become the biggest industry in Britain in terms of workforce. It expanded from 109,000 workers in 1830 <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=covtAAAAMAAJ&q=roy+church,+british+coal+industry&dq=roy+church,+british+coal+industry&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">to nearly 1.1 million in 1913</a>.</p>
<p>The early years of the 20th century proved to be the industry’s zenith, however. The period between World War I and II was one of crisis and catastrophic decline for coal. Its seemingly unassailable position was undermined by a series of economic factors – including the decision in 1925 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uvnCjgEACAAJ&dq=supple+british+coal+industry&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJirC5r-_JAhUBlw8KHfiHDfAQ6AEIMzAA">to return sterling to the gold standard</a>. This had the inadvertent effect of making British coal too expensive in its important, but increasingly vulnerable, overseas markets. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106893/original/image-20151222-27851-1i3azun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coal helped fuel the industrial revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Philipp_Jakob_Loutherbourg_d._J._002.jpg">Coalbrookdale by Night by Philip James de Loutherbourg</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As labour was the biggest cost in coal production, employers’ attempts to cut wages led to a series of bitter industrial relations disputes in the 1920s. The most well-known is the 1926 general strike, called by the Trades Union Congress in support of the miners. Although the general strike itself only lasted nine days, communities around the country’s coalfields held out for a further six months <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DVDSAAAAIAAJ&q=gildart+and+mcilroy&dq=gildart+and+mcilroy&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">before finally conceding defeat</a>.</p>
<p>Following the dark days of the 1920s and 1930s, the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947 by the Labour government led by Clement Attlee seemed to many miners to represent the dawn of a new era – the attainment of a long-held aspiration. And, while it did lead to improvements within the industry, it was not the golden age that many hoped for – <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=741IWgst3aQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=taylor+num+british+politics&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDpOPssO_JAhXMuxQKHQXNAsYQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=taylor%20num%20british%20politics&f=false">as the 1960s were to prove</a>.</p>
<h2>Decline and fall</h2>
<p>The 1960s saw the first significant post-war programme of colliery closures, prompted by the increasing use of alternative energy sources – oil, gas and nuclear power. These closures disproportionately impacted upon the smaller and more geographically peripheral coalfields. Declining real wage levels and bitterness toward these closures led to strike action in 1972 and 1974. </p>
<p>The 1972 strike crippled the UK’s power supplies, forced a three-day week and a state of emergency. And, in response to the 1974 strike, Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath called a snap election, which he subsequently lost to Labour. Both strikes were successful for the miners, leading to pay increases which put them among the highest paid of the working classes. </p>
<p>But, despite these victories, the strikes convinced senior figures within the Conservative Party – including newly-elected leader Margaret Thatcher – of the need to decisively confront and defeat the miners’ union, as the essential precursor to the denationalisation of the industry. Thatcher’s election in 1979 and re-election with an increased majority in 1983, made a major confrontation with the coal industry inevitable.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106900/original/image-20151222-27887-8hni4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thatcher’s crack down on miners divided the nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elcromaticom/9937454153/in/photolist-g993Ur-g993MT-eaddJa-hHZJ8L-ebhh74-eap7kH-eb9Sv3-eb4fnc-eeFesb-9R4sgF-ebXmew-66X6wP-jZCyLZ-edywkY-7qgiHX-oqVm7k-vJ8EYb-ebkQko-efFEb7-ebRYh4-BaVjjq-aJPK96-cqbUSd-G3bVn-bvRdWZ-9WcLH5-85UwQM-eaTGT4-49gBJf-7HHJtX-ecEATF-e9ZKza-eaTUPx-ecLfaw-bGRKng-7eZC5J-e6HPaX-e9HTaX-eaTGUF-9Ypxbh-g98w1A-g9941Z-gJxKKp-eaZkmq-eaTGPM-eaTUER-4GuHx4-4GyThS-4GyT5A-ebTQYW">M. Eichele</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In March 1984, in response to the announcement of a further round of colliery closures, miners went on strike to defend their jobs. The majority stayed out for an entire year, enduring significant financial and personal privations in doing so. It was a landmark event, which provides the inspiration or backdrop to numerous films and TV shows including Billy Elliot and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-miner-returns-to-the-silver-screen-in-pride-a-radical-rare-and-emotional-film-31326">Pride</a>.</p>
<p>Many commentators, both at the time and subsequently, emphasised the ideological battle that took place between the mineworkers’ union president, Arthur Scargill, and Margaret Thatcher. But, as recent studies of <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719086328/">Scotland</a> and <a href="http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9780708326107">south Wales</a> show, striker solidarity was not dependent on Scargill. It was driven by the determination of miners and their families to protect their livelihoods and that of the entire coalfield community.</p>
<p>The miners’s eventual defeat in 1985, cleared the way for a major reduction in the size of the coal industry, as a prelude to its privatisation in 1995. In 1979, there were 235,000 miners in Britain; <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RKe0AAAAIAAJ&q=m.+j.+parker,+the+politics+of+coal's+decline&dq=m.+j.+parker,+the+politics+of+coal's+decline&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6i76ike3JAhVCuBQKHTlpA6IQ6AEIJzAC">by early 1992 there were 32,000</a> – a figure which continued to dwindle thereafter. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106899/original/image-20151222-27897-167s8o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mines were central to many communities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/museumwales/4051900995/in/photolist-7b43ZZ-5XV1ek-5gYudA-7b43Z4-7b44c2-7b7RJ5-7b441t-7b7RUd-7b444i-7b44kF-7b44dk-7b44en-6XqocP-7b7RTA-7b7RZW-7b44hF-75BRBQ-7b7RRb-7b44g4-dv28GF-pgFYPB-5DfmUq-7mHDny-7b44i4-7b7RJL-cc2mXC-bUE8gt-7b44bc-7b44iK-7b446g-7b7RUN-5Af394-5Af3cZ-5NsxF8-mE1ZXi-6anSs9-bXasmr-6gfRn3-68QSxE-9ZiL49-34EixJ-C3Maa-8T2Ck6-hivAut-8T5Ju9-4opQCf-fBTZwp-3LzV9D-nHrAB7-3LzTqr">Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the communities in what were now rapidly becoming the former coalfields, the predominant experience was one of widespread unemployment and the problems associated with this. As <a href="http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/state-of-the-coalfields.pdf">a report published by Sheffield Hallam University in 2014</a> concluded, “the coalfields have significantly above-average levels of deprivation … The miners’ strike of 1984-85 may now be receding into history but the job losses that followed in its wake are still part of the everyday economic reality of most mining communities. The consequences are still all too visible in statistics on jobs, unemployment, benefits and health.”</p>
<p>From a historical perspective, the irony about the demise of deep mining is that the UK remains reliant on coal. Even in 2015, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/17/like-being-on-death-row-final-week-kellingley-colliery?CMP=twt_gu">coal provided 20% of Britain’s total energy requirements</a>. The major difference being, of course, that the vast majority is now imported from overseas, having been transported halfway around the world.</p>
<p>In terms of its rise and fall and the dramatic crises that it triggered, coal has been central to the 19th and 20th century history of Britain. Despite the industry’s zenith in the UK being a century ago now, its decline continues to cast a shadow over the former coalfield regions. With the closure of Kellingley, this iconic industry may have now finally disappeared – but its legacy is still very much with us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Curtis is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p>How the rise and fall of coal mining is central to fully understanding modern Britain.Ben Curtis, Lecturer in Modern Welsh History, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.