[SystemSafety] Aberfan 50 years on

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

Friday is the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, when a tip collapsed and overran a primary
school in Aberfan, Wales.

Roy Greenslade, a journalism professor a City University London and a Guardian columnist, comments
on the restrictions imposed on the press
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/17/aberfan-how-a-gullible-and-deferential-press-failed-the-victims
, referring to an article in the Daily Telegraph by Huw Edwards
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/aberfan-was-a-man-made-disaster-50-years-on-we-must-remember-thi/


I remember as a 15 year old being thoroughly shocked and deeply, deeply saddened. All those kids,
much younger than me, dead and gone. There must have been comments doing the rounds that it was a
"natural disaster", because I remember thinking "Rubbish. Someone built that tip, right above a
primary school. Or someone built that primary school right under the tip. One or the other."

It was far worse than that. Slides had happened before at Aberfan, and elsewhere, and it was well
known, locally and at the NCB, that the tip was build on top of springs. The NCB had simply been
ignoring the situation.

It is astonishing how people in power, such as Robens at the NCB, could get away with such a
response as Greenslade and Edwards describe. It bears thinking about. It is such past situations
that have led to the HSE and to the crime of corporate manslaughter. We have people such as Lord
Cullen to thank for all that.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
MoreInCommon
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de





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