Buried Alive by the National Coal Board
Fifty years ago on October 21st 1966, at about 9:15 am, a waste tip dumped by the National Coal Board on top of a hill in South Wales began to slide.
Soaked by rain and underground streams, a huge tidal wave of slurry and tailings started to rumble downhill. In its path was Ysgol Pant Glas, Aberfan’s primary school, full of children, fresh in the morning.
They never stood a chance. The school was obliterated. 116 schoolchildren aged between seven and nine were killed, along with 28 adults.
In Wales on the anniversary last Friday there was a minute’s silence of remembrance. The Prince of Wales visited Aberfan and left a wreath and a note. By Sunday the note had been taken.
In England the anniversary of the tragedy was mentioned in passing on news bulletins. But on Welsh TV there was an hour-long television poem, written by Owen Sheers and played and spoken by some of Wales’s leading actors.
I managed to track it down on iPlayer and I watched it last night. It was probably the most moving piece of drama I have seen this century. Harrowing, shocking, tragic, emotional, sorrowful — these aren’t words of recommendation. This wasn’t entertainment. This was grief. I felt as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus. And above all, the indifference of our lords and masters, still tangible after fifty years when this utter tragedy was relegated to a minor TV channel with little or no forward publicity. I only found out about it after it had been broadcast.
Aberfan — The Green Hollow is a masterpiece of television. Whether you’re from Wales or Waikiki, I challenge you to watch (and listen) to this remarkable work without a tear in your eye and rage in your heart at the callous indifference shown towards the bereaved of Aberfan by the government and the National Coal Board.
The acting is exemplary. We Welsh do grief and passion quite well. The poetry is stunning. Owen Sheers has come of age with this. I don’t use the word masterpiece lightly — this is one. Imagine a formal, serious Under Milk Wood, and you might begin to understand. Sheers doesn’t embrace verbal pyrotechnics like his predecessor, he just builds a quiet, growing intensity that captures the essence of shock and grips the viewer.
The rescuers uncover a group of twenty dead children together, their mouths open as if they were singing — but they weren’t singing — and in front of them, arms stretched wide as if to embrace and protect them all, was one teacher — one teacher against a mountain. In that description Sheers sums up the immensity and futility of the tragedy.
In court the coroner started to pass verdicts on the causes of death — asphyxiation, catastrophic injury — until a man stood up and shouted “No sir! They were buried alive by the National Coal Board!”
Please try and see this film. You won’t regret it. You won’t forget it.
