CHALICE

After three inches of rain in the week, men working on No 7 Pantglas Tip arrived at work at 7.30 am…

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A 30 foot crater had developed in the centre of the tip. Just after 9 the tip moved.

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Within seconds it rolled down the hillside, over 20 sheep, covered some walkers on the canal bank, smashed through 8 terraced houses in Moy Road, and buried the school.

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9.15 am

21st October

1966

Just three hours before

The half term holiday was to begin at

Pantglas Junior School

Aberfan

.....

1 in 2 families bereaved

.....

There were warnings, of course

.....

As always

.....

The Lord helps them now as helps themselves

[Thanks to Lady Thatcher]

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They are the rich men, the hollow men, stuffed with air

Whispering no meanings, to show they really care........

Soft-talking, seductive, motionless promises,

They have the answers, the questions and the messages

Made-up, but not so false, for we know what they are:

Powdered faces, 5 houses and a Minister’s car.

.....

Aberfan

A round gross of crushed Taffs -A lovely cemetery with a white arch

For each of the 116 children

And 28 adults

Was built

.....

The deputy headmaster tried to use the blackboard to shelter the children in his class - all 34 were killed

.....

On a tombstone

“Richard Goldsworthy, Aged 11,

Who loved Light, Freedom and Animals”

.....

On another

.....

“The parting was so sudden

One day we will know why

But the saddest part of all

We never said goodbye”

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“I’r Rhai a Garwn ac y Galarwn o’u colli”..........

.....

Today’s your birthday

Happy birthday to you

.....

To ease the pain

But not the hate

Or “The Dust”

.....

“See those rows of white arches?

Each one’s a child.

You can’t imagine what it was like.

It was as if someone took the roof off your house,

Filled it up to the top with dust and dirt,

And then put it back on.

They found 6 of the children still standing up around their teacher,

It happened so fast”

.....

What a joke

Sup your brandy, Kingsley

Suck your rusk, Martin - how are the new teeth?

.....

Intelligentsia, it’s funny

It makes your brain go runny

.....

“My supervisor called me out of the mine

And we went to help.

A farmhouse near the school

Had been pushed right through it.

I didn’t cry until I saw them

Bring a little baby from the farmhouse,

Suffocated by the dust”

.....

Apart from the baby, the village lost a three year old, 7 seven year olds, 25 eight year olds, 35 nine year olds, 35 ten year olds, 5 eleven year olds, 1 twelve year old, 3 thirteen year olds and 3 fourteen year olds - 116 potential novelists

.....

Let the children sing

.....

“I can still remember the noise,

a tremendous noise, like a thunder

but magnified a thousand times;

it sounded frightening

.....

Some instinct made me jump from my seat and try to run for the door.

.....

After that,

nothing,

till I came round and found

myself buried up to my waist

in black slurry.

.....

The walls and roof of the classroom

had caved in

and beside me,

under the rubble,

was a little boy I knew,

lying

dead.

.....

Another child’s hand was hanging above me,

poking through from the next class where the wall had given way.

I took hold of the hand

and squeezed it.

.....

I still don’t know whose hand it was -

a child who was already

very probably dead.

.....

On that day

116 children were killed,

my younger brother Carl, 7,

my sister Marilyn, 10,

among them.

.....

I was eight years old

and spent the months

following the tragedy

in hospital with hip

and leg injuries.

.....

The world mourned for Aberfan,

but the focus was on the children

who had been lost

rather than those who had survived.

Everyone was so busy looking for someone to blame,

we were chucked aside,

forgotten.

.....

It was about 30 years ago,

and nobody thought about

our traumas and nightmares

then.

.....

The attitude was that you should be grateful

that you were alive. For years I never spoke

about what had happened.

.....

At that age I was too embarrassed to talk about how I felt.

I thought I would be laughed at.

All of us were brought up then to bottle up emotions,

to bury what had happened and

get on as best we could.

But I needed to get it out of my system.

.....

At 12, I wrote it all down in a blue school exercise book, every detail of what I had

seen and how I felt at the time and afterwards.

Nobody saw it but my family and one teacher.

After he had read it he did not even speak to me, he seemed so shocked.

My parents were horrified.

.....

It was another 20 years before I took it out and showed it to a woman who was writing a book about Aberfan. In the meantime, I had tried to forget and I was shocked at how forcibly it all came back to me. I realised I still had a great deal of suffering inside me, that I needed to talk and to think about how Aberfan had affected all of us who were involved. A lot of people had breakdowns, probably because they were never adequately able to share their grief."

.....

No individual was to blame

For a tip

Smothering

A school

.....

The Chairman of the NCB

Lord Robens

Claimed that they did not know

That the tip was placed on a stream

.....

What a scream

If you had but the chance

Who bloody cares as long as Income Tax is under 25 pence?

.....

That seems to be the going rate for discussion -Of course we’ll be forced to leave the country if taxes rise.

[Thankyou, Messrs Caine, Lloyd-Webber and Collins - be sure you take your

muzak and money with you as you close the door]

.....

“And in the end

The love you take

Is equal to the

Love you make”

.....

It has started

The white arches

are becoming overgrown tombstones

in abandoned graveyards in our memories

.....

‘Without a knowledge of history

One is condemned

To repeat the mistakes

Of the past’

.....

Who realises that ALL wealth

stems from some poor bastard

digging something out of the ground ?

.....

It never ends

every night

in tears

the “nightmare never dies”

.....

Mothers still die of broken hearts

Front rooms are their children’s shrines

.....

Miners used bare, bleeding hands to remove tons of slurry off the buried children - in the black slime they were afraid of driving a spade into a child’s body

..............................

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“When the tip collapsed on October 21, 1996, Idris Cole had been at work since 7.30am. He recalls that he and his colleagues were struck by an uncanny silence in the air just before the calamity. Here, (thirty years later) he reveals for the first time what happened next.”

.....

“Suddenly, someone shouted to my workmates that the tip had collapsed and was on the move. The main water pipe carrying water to Cardiff had been crushed with the weight of the tip and torrential rain, until it was like a wafer, causing the tip to slide down the mountain. We rushed to the school, wading through slurry which had gone through the houses over a large area and on down to the river. The whole tip had moved silently, like a volcano spewing lava, but this was horrible black slurry. The scene as we approached the school was horrendous and frightening beyond description - screams and shouts of mothers and fathers, some of them who had just taken their children to school and had stopped for a chat. It was all so terrifyingly unbelievable. In their panic, people were unable to think what to do.

.....

Their screams have never gone away. My workmates and myself waded on through the slurry and the rubble of the crushed building. I dived down to where I could see some of the children, the ones who had not been completely buried. Some, like rag dolls, were crushed against a radiator. And a teacher with outstretched arms, as if to protect the little ones. I was one of the first people to get right in the middle of it, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I recall one distraught father frantically searching for his two children. He was hysterical and kept pushing me away from what I was trying to do. He was out of his mind with anguish and had to be led away and physically restrained.

.....

I think I went mad myself, from what I was seeing. But I just had to get on with using my skills and trying to keep the slurry back. Some part of the roof was still there, but hanging dangerously. The skills of the building trade enables my mates and myself to jack it up to prevent further falls. We worked late in the night by the light of lamps which were brought in. I have never done so much crying as that day; we all did. The slurry was so deep, at one point I almost got sucked down into it. They had to pull me out and strip off my denims and my shirt, but I just wanted to carry on. Eventually, I collapsed from exhaustion and was carried off. I had double pneumonia and was given an injection which put me to sleep for many, many hours. I didn’t know where I was by then; all I remember is seeing the doctor bending over me to give me the injection.

.....

I don’t think I have ever felt completely normal since that day. I had experienced may horrors during the war, from the beaches of Dunkirk, to a naval battle on the battleships taking us to Malta where I served for three years. Malta was under siege, continuously being bombed, and on very meagre rations. From there, I went to Minterno and Cassino, where we had to bury many of our comrades who were slaughtered. But nothing can ever erase the memory of that fateful morning at Aberfan and the loss of 116 little children. It was much worse, because it was the children who died. Their laughter would never ring out again in that sad, sad, village. I can never forget it. Let no-one ever forget that terrifying, sad day - or the lesson to be learned.”

.....

Most villagers will still not talk about it

Grief is private

And unrewarded

The proud humility

Of non-acceptance

.....

An Appeal Fund raised £1.75 million from the British public.

The National Coal Board asked for £250,000 from it

And accepted £150,000

To meet the costs of clearing the remaining slurry

From the hilltops around the town

.....

The families of the bereaved were offered £500 each

Regardless of how many children

The National Coal Board had killed.

Eventually, the generous NCB

Gave £1500 per family

From the Appeal Money

It had taken

.....

Tiny front rooms in the packed terraces

Are shrines to the dead generation

And the generation of broken-hearted deaths

.....

The mine closed in 1989

''What becomes of the broken-hearted

Who had love that''s now departed………''

The 4,236 page enquiry

Banished all tips

From the edges of mining villages

.....

There is no money left

From the Appeal Fund

To restore the Portland Stone Monument

Or maintain the Memorial Gardens

The White Arches

Of the dead children

.....

The Fund built an expensive community centre

With no monies for its upkeep

So the local council took it over

.....

£1500 per family

The Royalties of Murder

.....

As bitter as he’s ugly

Just like his scabby daddy

This pox-scarred whelp

Needs some real help

Because he’s his mummy’s babby

.....

“No Iranian torturer could have elicited a greater variety of winces and flinches”

states Amis fils, being forced to endure the whole of the screening of

“Four Weddings and A Funeral” with one of his fellow illuminated glitterati,

Salman Rushdie.

They cannot leave early because of security reasons.

The great Rushdie explains that

“The world has bad taste. Didn’t you know that?”

.....

Blest are those with choice and no contempt

.....

Listen to John Evans, a miner aged just 47 and looking into darkness:

‘I’m glad I haven’t a son......It must be a heart-breaking business to watch your boy

Grow into manhood and then see him deteriorating

Because there is no work for him to do.......I’ve been out of work now for eight years,

And I’ve only managed to get eleven days work In all that time.

Work used to shape the whole of my life

And now I’ve got to face the fact

That this won’t be so any more.

I am really glad I live in the Rhondda.

There’s real kindness and comradeship here,

And that just about makes life worth living.

The spirit here in this valley helps to soften

Many of the hardships of unemployment.’

.....

Crush our language

Crush our men

Crush our youth

Crush our children

Turn the babies back to dust

.....

Parfait gentil knights

Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram

1982The Malvinas

43 Welsh Guards

Sitting ducks

In another futile English war

No-one was to blame

Although the captain was implored

To disembark

.....

“After all, it never would have happened if Mark Thatcher had been in the army instead of secreting millions of pounds in his Swiss bank accounts and why should multimillionaires fight for their country anyway they are far too valuable of course and just why should we pay taxes in Britain and what do you think of the claret, perhaps a teensy robust?” warbles the acclaimed novelist, wit and raconteur

.....

Unlike Simon Weston

The name with no face

Or skin

.....

Sing along now in your English cathedrals:

Glory Glory Maggie Thatcher

Glory Glory Maggie Thatcher

Glory Glory Maggie Thatcher

Hide all the cripples away

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Only complete heroes sit in the front, please,

You’ll upset the voters

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“Everywhere there’s lots of piggies

Living piggy lives

You can see them out for dinner

With their piggy wives”

.....

The pits have gone

Except for one

The dust is going

The wealth has gone

The slag heaps are going

The breed is still here

Uproot us if you can

.....

Our brightest and best

Are forced to leave

But they always come back

.....

You are in our country

You changed it

We made the money

You spent it

We held together

You used us

Take what’s left

And leave us

.....

Never understand

.....

............................Real ghosts.

.....

Deracinate intrenchant cultures, now!

And place fresh holly on sweet Jesus’ brow,

Slit sad sores, suck old pus,

And abetting of such sights,

Lose starving blue bridges of the sky,

Regretting rien for our plight, forgetting in the laxer light,

Shame washed with blood, disputes with death,

The hurdling towards night.

.....

Norman bastards…………………………..

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[This poem was originally written in 1991 while working in London, in response to Martin Amis'' opinion of Aberfan - that event was too painful to write about before I felt the anger inspired by Amis. It was updated in 1996 and 2000 and finally published in 2002. Quotes are from eyewitnesses, Lennon-McCartney, D.Gwenallt Jones, “The Dead”, Santayana, ‘Gwalia Deserta’ Verse VII by Idris Davies, and The Western Mail article upon Idris Cole upon the thirtieth anniversary of Aberfan. Martin Amis comments upon watching a popular film being worse than castration, rape and murder were in his New Yorker column in January 1996, and also reported in Private Eye, Feb 9, 1996. The remembrances of a survivor were reported in The Sunday Times, 15 September 1996, and Gaynor Madgwick’s book of dealing with the horrors of memory is ‘Struggling Out of The Darkness’, published by Valley and Vale in September 1996. John Evans is quoted in ‘Time To Spare’, 1935, by F.Green ]

...

Footnote: After a workers’ buy-out, Tower Colliery is the only deep mine pit left in Wales, and was at risk because of a fire in Aberthaw Power Station, its main customer. The Poet Laureate Ted Hughes called the first version of this poem ''a fascinating assemblage''. By that he probably meant that it was not poetry, but Aberfan affected me profoundly, and I eventually had to write something to help purge my feelings. I can still cry about the event, so always try to shift it from my thoughts. I heard the news on my car radio, driving home from Manchester University to Barri in 1968. It was over 20 years before I could write anything. I was working in London and saw the Amis article in the Evening Standard that absolutely enraged me. In 2001, on BBC Radio Wales, I was promoting my ''100 Great Welshmen'', in a 3-way link with Gareth Edwards and Tanni Grey-Thompson, when a caller said that I should have included George Thomas in the book. I replied, fairly soberly, that it was not his sexual persuasion which had led to his exclusion, but the fact that no resident of Aberfan would think that he should be in the book. In secret Cabinet Papers, finally released under the 30-year rule, it had been revealed that it was George Thomas''s recommendation that the fund for the villagers be used by the government to clear the coal-tips. A producer at the BBC congratulated me after the programme, stating that the BBC toffs always laid out a special welcome for Thomas, treating him like royalty on his visits. I could never, ever understand the near-hagiography of Thomas''s admirers, even before the news of his betrayal was released - he seemed a deeply devious, Royalist, sycophant, and the very antithesis of a Socialist. One wishes, as ever, that the Welsh people would vote for people as its representatives rather than for the nominees of political parties. George Thomas = Lord Tonypandy = please fill in the box…………..