Aberfan

The BBC has recently produced an outstanding — if necessarily harrowing — podcast about the Aberfan disaster and its aftermath. Distressing as its contents undoubtedly are, it is required listening. The facts of the tragedy are well-known: on the hills outside Aberfan, a mining village part of the Merthyr Vale colliery, coal slurry and waste were stored on various tips. Tip no. 7 was on ground served by various streams, some of them underground. This and the tip’s increasing instability were known to the National Coal Board (“NCB”). Warnings were given but despite this and the fact that it was next to a primary school and residential houses, nothing was done. On the morning of October 21st 1966 it collapsed onto the school and nearby houses, killing 116 young children and 28 adults. A whole generation of children was wiped out. In a close-knit community the effect was devastating — not just for those losing children — but the survivors and those who witnessed the tragedy.

What compounded the tragedy and the continuing sorrow was the response of the authorities — not just in the immediate aftermath — but for years later, a response which combined a refusal to accept any responsibility, defensiveness, arrogance, callousness and an extraordinary lack of basic human empathy. Some examples will suffice:

· Right from the very day of the tragedy the NCB did everything it could to avoid accepting responsibility, with the Chairman, Lord Robens, stating that no-one knew about the streams. This was a lie. The Board did know. It simply ignored this. Its response to previous requests for the removal of the tips was to threaten the mine’s closure.

· It continued denying responsibility until forced to accept it under pressure from intense cross-examination by counsel for the families.

· Despite the findings of the official inquiry which found the NCB and nine individuals wholly responsible for the disaster, no-one was prosecuted nor was the NCB fined. No other action was taken against any of those held responsible.

· Without informing the families, let alone getting their consent, subjecting children who had survived to psychiatric interventions designed not to help them but to justify reducing the amount of compensation paid if they could be classified as “sane”.

· Accusing those parents who petitioned for compensation higher than the £500 originally offered as “seeking to capitalize” on the tragedy.

· The Charity Commission queried the amount of compensation paid to families from the Disaster Fund, a fund created from thousands of donations from ordinary people. It wanted parents to have to prove that they were “close” to their children before compensation was paid and prevented payment to those whose suffering was mental only. It even queried whether spending money on a memorial garden was worthwhile.

· Worst of all, despite the then Prime Minister, Wilson, stating that the tips had to go, neither the NCB nor the Government were prepared to pay for this in full. The villagers had to contribute a third of the cost themselves from the Disaster Fund. It was not until the 1997 Blair government that the amount taken was returned and not until 2007 that a further sum was paid to reflect inflation and interest foregone. The decision to make the villagers contribute to the tip’s removal caused intense anger amongst villagers, even years later. It was seeing this in person at close hand that convinced a later generation of Labour politicians — in particular, Ron Davies, the Welsh Secretary — finally to do the right thing.

Was all this, dreadful as it was, a one-off? Could anyone really properly prepare for such horrible events? Is it unfair to criticise too much those who respond? If only. A similar pattern can be seen in how different authorities have responded to later equally ghastly events.

Hillsborough

It took 27 years, several inquiries and persistent intense campaigning from the families before the truth of what happened came out. Far from loutish drunken fans being responsible for the 96 deaths as assumed, they were caused by multiple failures by the police and football authorities followed by attempts to cover up what had happened and repeated refusals to have proper inquiries. It needed Andy Burnham to hear for himself the heartfelt and determined chants for justice by thousands of Liverpool fans in 2006 to make him realise that more than an expression of condolences was needed.

The contaminated blood scandal

From the 1970’s onwards thousands of people with blood disorders were infected with HiV and hepatitis as a result of the use of contaminated blood imported from the US. The majority have died. The NHS, pharmaceutical companies and clinicians knew of the risks but said nothing to patients and continued to remain silent, even as warnings were received. No proper compensation was ever paid and it took until 2017 before an inquiry — still ongoing — was announced. By the time it finishes will any of those affected still be alive?

The Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

The Francis report detailed multiple and prolonged failings in care over a 4-year period between 2005–2009. These failings of nursing and medical care led to appalling treatment and higher than normal mortality rates, with hundreds of people dying as a result. There was a culture of denial of the problems, inadequate initial inquiries and patients and relatives’ concerns dismissed, often callously. It was only prolonged pressure from relatives which eventually led to the inquiries and changes.

There have been many other similar issues in the NHS: take, for example, maternity care with problems and inquiries at Northwick Park, Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, Wales, East Kent, Nottingham University Trust. In all the problems were poor care exacerbated by inadequate leadership, a poor workplace culture and an inability to learn lessons or implement good practice. And in all, it took concerted pressure by the ordinary people affected before action was taken.

There are plenty of other examples.

• Look at the policing and local authority failures in relation to children groomed and sexually abused in local authority homes or by gangs of rapists.
• Or the police failings which allowed serial killer Stephen Port to kill four young gay men.
• Or the way in which many migrants from the Caribbean and their descendants were treated by the Home Office when asked to provide proof of their right to live in the country they had lived and worked in for decades.
• Or take the way the Post Office dealt with sub-postmasters falsely accused of fraud, having to be dragged kicking and screaming to the courts to accept responsibility for what is one of the worst and largest miscarriages of justice in British history.
• And then there is the story of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 and — four and a half years later — the admission and apology by counsel for the government that its building safety system was “unfit for purpose with catastrophic consequences” i.e. 72 people dead and thousands more trapped in unsellable properties facing large repair bills.

Why?

There are lots of proximate reasons for these failings. But there are two worth looking at.

The arrogance of indispensability

When the National Coal Board was set up it was described as acting “on behalf of the people”. A fine slogan. In reality, as the main employer in the Welsh valleys its power was enormous. There was no effective way of challenging it. So when the interests of the institution clashed with those of the people in whose name it had been set up, guess whose came first. In a bitter irony, a body set up to improve the pay and working conditions of miners had a dismissive attitude towards the complaints from miners’ families about the dangers posed to them by the tips, which led it to discounting the validity of their concerns. When the worst happened, the institution — like many under pressure — sought to protect itself, even at the expense of those who suffered greatly as a result of its behaviour.

The same could be said of the NHS or the Post Office or the police. The belief that being in public ownership or being a public service will somehow automatically make an organization behave well and put the public’s interests first when these clash with those of the institution and those who work in it, often at a senior level, has often proved hollow. We do such organisations no favours by treating them as sacred cows. Until we stop doing so, changing dysfunctional or arrogant cultures — as painfully detailed in report after report — will be harder than it should be.

An indifference to the little people

Of course no-one would describe voters or miners or children in care or patients or employees or victims of crime as little people. The very idea. And yet when you listen to those on the receiving end, this is how they felt they were being treated — with an indifference that sometimes bordered on contempt, as if they were a nuisance or grasping or lying about their concerns or suffering. Listen to Nina Smallman, mother of the two girls, Nicole Smallman and Biba Henry, murdered in South London in 2020. Two Metropolitan police officers were later convicted and jailed for misconduct in public office — taking photos of the girls’ bodies while they were being guarded. Nina Smallman said this about how her daughters’ murders had been investigated and reported:

“In the pecking order of things, we are the lowest on the ladder.”

Nina Smallman felt that young black girls were not sufficiently valued by the police and ignored by the press, a distinction highlighted by the very different coverage given to the disappearance and murder of Sarah Everard a few months later.

There is the indifference which can be one of the causes of a problem. But what is often worse is the indifference shown to victims after problems have arisen. It is hard to understand the callousness of some decisions. Perhaps it is made easier by forgetting or ignoring those who are affected. And, of course, there are often legal and other reasons for doing what can seem cold or cruel.

What should happen?

After something goes badly wrong, there is one question which should be asked by those on whose watch this happened: what is the goal? If it is to protect the institution at all costs (what is usually done), all can be justified. But if it is to solve the problem (what should be done but often isn’t) — to learn important lessons, provide some element of restitution to those suffering harm — then forgetting or minimising the human element is disastrous.

People who have suffered want two things above all: to be heard and justice — not simply justice for the perpetrators — but the acknowledgement of the truth of what happened and why. Ignoring this makes them more determined not less. Take the Aberfan parents: they wanted it recorded that their children had been killed by the National Coal Board. They did not get this, despite the findings of the official inquiry. By contrast, the Hillsborough families fought for years to get a verdict of unlawful killing. It mattered that what happened was not simply written off as an accident, but a consequence of actions and decisions by human beings which could and should have been different. And which would be different in future if the truth was understood and acted on.

It feels like indifference to those on the receiving end. But perhaps its impulse is less the effect on the victims but more a desire to save face by those responsible. The truth about what happened was important to the families. It mattered that this was publicly acknowledged. But this public acknowledgement is something the authorities find hard to accept or admit. (The paradox is that the later it is said the more victims will want something else — compensation or prosecutions — as a substitute.) It is not just concerns about having to pay compensation which drives this, important as it is. It harms an institution’s self-image and, often, of senior people within it. “We got it wrong.” is hard to say. If “we get it wrong” what sort of a “we” are we, really? Avoiding the shame of having to admit that your actions or inactions have been responsible for the suffering of others is what drives this defensiveness and indifference.

Listen to what Sheila Lewis, a bereaved mother, had to say about some of the evidence given at the official Aberfan inquiry:

“What I heard there was very difficult for me to accept. Because most people who were brought to the stand seemed to think it was somebody else’s fault. Not theirs at all. I believe one of the engineers got on the stand and he didn’t seem to realise his dreadful part in this happening. And when I heard what he had to say it made me feel sick because it looked to me as though he couldn’t have cared less about what had happened on account of his neglect.

It was a good thing I think that I wasn’t on the stand or wasn’t talking to him, you know, because I’d have floored him.”

The human touch

What makes the Aberfan podcast so affecting is the way it gives a voice to those involved:

· 4 of the children who survived — Gaynor Minnett, Gerald Kirwan, Gareth Jones and Jeff Edwards;

· a girl, Denise Morgan, who lost her younger sister, Annette;

· Sheila Lewis, who lost her daughter, Sharon;

· Mansel Aylward, a 23-year-old medical student who helped with the rescue;

· one of the rescuers, David Evans and a policeman, Charles Nunn;

· Vincent Kane, a BBC reporter and David Hurn, photographer.

Names with lives, sounding like us, real. They could be us or people we know. They are parents and grand-parents now. They have a voice and we can hear them speak for themselves. It is humbling to hear Chris Crocker, who lost her claim for compensation for PTSD, say that she was nonetheless glad that she was able to tell her story, to describe what happened to her. It is necessary to hear the disappointment of her lawyer, Glyn Maddocks, at the gap between the legally correct decision and justice. Too often the victims are nameless or summed up in a few short words which do not do justice to the richness and depth of who they are and how their lives and families were affected.

What about the reporters?

Journalists are often criticised for intruding into private grief, for using sadness as a peg for stories, as a form of entertainment, a true life drama, for turning us into voyeurs. David Hurn, who photographed the scene, describes very movingly the tension between recording the event and not wishing to intrude into a place among people who did not want him there.

But at their best they can turn statistics and dry claims of broken processes, inadequate procedures and systems failures into a human reality. They can help keep the pressure on those who wish the issue to go away. They can help uncover what others would hide. Above all, they can tell the stories of the human beings at the heart of the scandals and disasters and miscarriages of justice.

• It was Nick Wallis who followed up the stories of individual postmasters and helped uncover one of the worst scandals ever — people imprisoned not simply for a crime they had not committed but one which had never happened.
• It was Andrew Norfolk who gave a voice to the girls groomed and raped and ignored by the authorities, girls seen as troubled, valueless and complicit in their own abuse until the reality was uncovered.
• And it was a novelist, Andrew O’Hagan, who wrote the single best account of the people in the Grenfell Tower, those who died, those who survived and those who tried to help them both before and after the fire.

Inquiries and investigations have their place but if we forget the humanity of those involved we miss something essential, something which might help us behave better next time. The least we can do is hear their stories and thank those who bring them to us.

Let me end with this quote, from the closing speech of Desmond Ackner QC, Counsel for the Aberfan families, to the official inquiry.

Those who died in this disaster lost their lives not because of the occupational hazards which are ever present in these mining valleys. There was no sudden collapse of an underground working, no unforeseeable or unforeseen explosion. This was a slow growing man-made menace, fed by the indifference of those who should never have permitted its existence. That is the horror of this disaster. There can be no more bitter reminder of the truth and wisdom of George Bernard Shaw’s condemnation —

“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”

Notes:

· The Aberfan podcast can be found at BBC Sounds — Aberfan: Tip Number 7 — Available Episodes.

· Nick Wallis’s podcast about the Post Office and the sub-postmasters can be found at BBC Radio 4 — The Great Post Office Trial. His book about the case — “The Great Post Office Scandal” — has been published. The official inquiry headed by retired judge, Sir Wyn Williams, can be followed here — https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/. I have written 2 articles about this-

(1) The Cheque is in the Post – May 2023; and

(2) A Missed Opportunity – July 2023

· The impact on the Windrush generation and their descendants is detailed in Amelia Gentleman’s book “The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment”.

· In April 2023 the second interim report recommended interim payments of £100,000 to those affected by tainted blood — https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/england-infected-blood-support-scheme

· Andrew O’Hagan’s article on the Grenfell Tower fire is at Andrew O’Hagan · The Tower · LRB 7 June 2018. In April 2023 900 people settled their civil claims arising out of the fire — https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/settlement-reached-for-900-claimants-in-grenfell-civil-case-81123. The public inquiry continues.

· Nina Smallman was guest editor of Radio 4’s Today programme on 1 January 2022. It can be heard on BBC Sounds.

· Andy Burnham’s speech at Anfield in 2006 can be seen here — https://youtu.be/-z3mBIi084Q

· There are innumerable official reports on the inquiries mentioned here. To list them all would take too long. They can be found at www.gov.uk or, for those interested in those relating to abuse of children, at www.iicsa.org.uk. I have written about one aspect here — Two Lessons Learnt — July 2021

· There are lots of official reports on the police. (Some of them are listed in the article — No Sh*t, Sherlock! (no. 11 below.) My own attempts at summarising some of the key issues arising are set out here:

(1)  Blind to Justice – August 2019

(2) The Tyranny of Low Expectations — October 2019

(3) A Toxic Culture? — January 2020

(4) Lockdown Blues — April 2020

(5) Here We Go (Again) — March 2021

(6) The Rise (and Fall?) of Cressida Dick — June 2021

(7) If Not Now, When? — June 2021

(8) What Now? — October 2021

(9) Don’t Tell. Show Us. — December 2021

(10) What Should the Met Do Now? — February 2022

(11) No Sh*t, Sherlock! — November 2022

(12) Unhappy Valley — March 2023