The Official Companion, Volume 2: Political Scandal, Personal Struggle, and the Years that Defined Elizabeth II (1956-1977) by Robert Lacey

Author:Robert Lacey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2019-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

Episode 303’s account of the Aberfan disaster closely follows the dateline of 21 October 1966 and the other events reported through the days that followed, together with the evidence heard during the subsequent tribunal of investigation. All the Aberfan characters in the episode are identified by invented names in order not to cause any further distress to survivors and families of the victims. To this day, as a mark of respect to their classmates who died, Pantglas survivors decline to specify names when discussing the incident.

Some details about the tip have been changed, including the description of how the start of the subsidence was identified – in reality, the coal tip supervisor, whose name has been changed, had travelled up to the tip that morning, so he was the first witness to see the disaster unfold.

Harold Wilson is shown hearing the news of the tip slide at the opening of a hypermarket (a term not established in the UK until 1970) in Skelmersdale New Town, Merseyside. In reality the Prime Minister was in Wigan, next door to Skelmersdale, having lunch with the local corporation, and he completed his visit while receiving updates on the disaster, before flying to Aberfan – four hours after first hearing the news.

Tony Armstrong-Jones, Princess Margaret’s husband Lord Snowdon, was among those early on the scene, having rushed from London to Aberfan the moment he heard the news. The various details of his dramatic visit have been reconstructed from his original itinerary and from press accounts. He went straight to the Bethania Chapel, where 50 or so parents, mostly fathers, were still waiting to identify their children’s bodies and were emerging quite shattered. Leaving the trained rescue teams to do their job, Snowdon concentrated on those who wanted to pour out their feelings.

‘He had gone spontaneously,’ wrote Harold Wilson in his diary, ‘and instead of inspecting the site, he made it his job to visit the bereaved relatives, sitting holding the hands of a distraught father, sitting with the head of a mother on his shoulder for half an hour in silence.

‘In another house he comforted an older couple who had lost thirteen grandchildren – in another where they were terribly upset, he offered to make a cup of tea, went into the kitchen and returned with a tray with cups for them all. He helped an older man persuade his son, who was clutching something in his tightly clenched fist, to open his hand. It was a prefect’s badge, the only thing by which he had been able to identify his child…’405

Prince Philip arrived the next day, but Elizabeth II held back, actually refusing her staff’s suggestions that she should go down to South Wales.

‘We kept presenting the arguments,’ recalls one adviser, ‘but nothing we said could persuade her.’

‘People will be looking after me,’ she objected. ‘So perhaps they’ll miss some poor child that might have been found under the wreckage.’406

Elizabeth’s imagining of the lost child showed the reality of her concern – and she could not imagine why her own particular presence should matter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.