In my post yesterday about Aberfan, I mentioned that the National Coal Board ignored all the warning signs, adding that 'moving mountains' were well known in the valleys before 1966.
My father, Bob Skinner, describes in his book, Don't hold the front page!, how his days as a pioneering television reporter included an assignment to 'the moving mountain of Blaina', "an ominous forerunner of the Aberfan tragedy":
"The black mountain of coal sludge towering over the small Monmouthshire mining town, made unstable by a torrent of rain, was on the move. Local residents in its path had been evacuated and I had to interview one of them on the lower slope of the black slurry. The camera was set up and I faced a worried looking housewife and began the interview. All was going well until I found myself gradually being sucked down into the black morass beneath. Bravely I carried on, only to see my interviewee rapidly growing taller before my eyes. I still carried on, my gaze slipping inexorably from her face to her formidable, damp bosom. Down and down I went, until, truncated, I had to stop and be hauled to the surface by the producer and cameraman, who, somehow, could still see and keep their feet. A clever man, that cameraman - when the interview was screened that night, no one could tell I was almost a dwarf."
Rob,
The complacency of the NCB in the face of the evidence presented by your father and others undoubtedly led to the tragedy at Aberfan. That is something which needs to be remembered.
Posted by: Andrew Grant-Adamson | October 22, 2006 at 07:38 PM