Aberfan — and the bill sent to the children's fund

The tribunal blamed the Coal Board outright. Then the government took £150,000 donated for the dead children to clear the tips.

At a quarter past nine on a Friday morning, colliery waste tip No. 7 above Aberfan liquefied and came down the mountain into Pantglas Junior School, minutes after the children had gone into class. 144 people died; 116 were children. The tip had been built over ground from which springs emerged, and the village had complained about the tips for years — residents about flooding, and the borough council in writing to the National Coal Board about the danger from coal slurry.

The tribunal

The tribunal under Lord Justice Edmund Davies blamed the National Coal Board outright — “Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board” — naming nine of its staff and finding that the Board had no tipping policy at all. Nobody was prosecuted, dismissed or demoted. The Attorney-General decided the report did not justify criminal proceedings; those named who were still in the Board's service were, in the Secretary of State's words to the Commons, “moved to other work”. Lord Robens offered his resignation and the government refused it.

The bill sent to the fund

Then the part that is hard to read. The public sent about £1.75 million to a disaster fund. The remaining tips still loomed over the village and the NCB would not pay to remove them — so the government pressed the trustees, and £150,000 donated for the dead children paid to take them down. The money was returned in 1997, without interest and without any allowance for inflation; in 2007 the Welsh Assembly Government paid a further £1.5 million to the Aberfan Memorial Charity and £500,000 to the Aberfan Education Charity in recompense.

One correction

Corrected — it is widely repeated online that the Charity Commission ruled the raid on the fund “unquestionably unlawful”. We can find no such ruling. What the record shows is the opposite failing: the Commission intervened where it should not have, policing how the fund paid bereaved parents, and was silent in 1968 when the government took the £150,000. The judgement that paying for the tips’ removal was not a lawful use of charitable funds is the historians’ — McLean and Johnes — not the regulator’s.

Sources

Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the Disaster at Aberfan on October 21st, 1966 (HL 316 / HC 553, HMSO, 1967) — the Edmund Davies tribunal report.
Iain McLean and Martin Johnes, Aberfan: Government and Disasters (Welsh Academic Press, 2000).
Iain McLean and Martin Johnes, 'Aberfan: no end of a lesson', History & Policy — the raid on the Disaster Fund, its lawfulness, and the Charity Commission's silence in 1968.
Nuffield College, Oxford — 'The Aberfan Disaster Fund' and 'The Tribunal of Inquiry into the Aberfan Disaster' (McLean/Johnes ESRC project) — fund totals and tribunal findings.
Hansard, House of Commons, 26 October 1967 — the Secretary of State on the tribunal's findings, the Attorney-General's decision not to prosecute, and named staff being 'moved to other work'; and 31 July 1997 on the repayment of the £150,000.

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