ABERFAN II: After the Disaster; the Fight for Justice, and the Legacy of Aberfan

The disaster lasted minutes. The consequences lasted generations.

On 21 October 1966, a colliery spoil tip collapsed above the Welsh village of Aberfan.

One hundred and forty-four people died.

One hundred and sixteen were children.

The catastrophe at Pantglas Junior School became one of the darkest moments in modern British history.

But the story did not end when the digging stopped.

In ABERFAN II — After the Disaster, investigative author Bill Stewart turns to the years that followed: the questions, the tribunal, the National Coal Board, the battle to remove the remaining tips and the extraordinary controversy surrounding money donated to the Aberfan Disaster Fund.

The official inquiry concluded that the disaster was preventable and placed responsibility firmly upon the National Coal Board.

Yet for the people of Aberfan, establishing blame was only the beginning.

They still had to fight.

They fought for the remaining tips to be removed.

They watched as £150,000 from money donated for the victims became entangled in the cost of clearing the industrial waste above their village.

They lived with grief while officials debated responsibility, compensation and money.

And survivors, parents and rescuers carried memories that no tribunal could remove.

Published in the year of the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, this companion volume examines the part of the story that is too often reduced to a footnote.

The first question was:

What happened?

The second was just as important:

What happened afterwards?

ABERFAN II is the story of the reckoning.