ON the afternoon of Friday October 21, 1966, we were studying French at Longcar Central School when the word spread that there’d been a terrible accident in the Welsh Valleys.

Some children had died, we heard, but the full extent of the tragedy wasn’t clear until we reached home.

Cliff Michelmore, the balding, bespectacled anchorman for the BBC evening news was at the scene outside Pantglas Primary School, in the small village of Aberfan.

He wanted to describe how a mighty colliery muck-stack, squatting precariously on the top of a mountain, had slithered at speed down into the valley and buried a school and everyone in it.

Michelmore, normally ice-cool under pressure, couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice, or the tears from rolling down his cheeks. That sight affected the whole nation.

The valley was in darkness except for the floodlights under which the rescuers were frantically digging to save lives – some using their bare hands.

At the time it seemed like a terrible accident but investigators later proved it was nothing of the sort. The National Coal Board (NCB) had broken its own rules when in 1958 it had decided to place a new coal-tip upon a mountain that had more than one natural spring flowing down it.

Dumping thousands of tons of colliery waste on top of a mountain with natural springs was sheer madness. The springs had been clearly marked on Ordnance Survey maps since 1876 but the NCB still decided to play Russian roulette with the lives of thousands of people.

Three years before the disaster there had been clear warnings when the muck-stack twice slipped a short distance down the mountainside, but the NCB denied there had been any slippage, and continued tipping.

However, the residents were convinced this was a cover-up, and the local council took up the fight. In correspondence they warned the NCB regarding ‘dangers from coal slurry being tipped at the rear of Pantglas School’.

In 1965 further meetings were held with the NCB who promised faithfully to do something about the poor drainage – but then failed to honour their promise.

At 13 minutes past nine on that fateful Friday morning, the teachers were calling the attendance and dinner registers when the ‘sound of thunder’ could be heard as the avalanche gathered pace.

Most adults and children didn’t stand a chance. In a few minutes the school and the nearby homes were enveloped in turgid grey slurry. One meals supervisor was killed as she used her body to shield five children – all of whom survived. A teacher tried to protect himself and several pupils by the use of a mobile blackboard, but all perished.

When the avalanche came to a halt, the thunderous noise turned to absolute silence – and ‘not a bird or a child could be heard’.

But by then 116 children aged between seven and ten, and 28 adults, had perished beneath the morass.

Lord Robens, chairman of the NCB, was nowhere to be seen because that Friday evening he had a more important engagement – he was being invested as chancellor of the University of Surrey.

At the inquest three days later, one man – who’d lost his wife and two sons – shouted out that they had been ‘buried alive by the National Coal Board’, and one woman screamed that the ‘NCB has killed our children’.

Immediately after the disaster a memorial hardship fund was set up and the people of Wales, and the world, gave generously. But Lord Robens and his crew were allowed to ‘purloin’ £150,000 of it to help pay for the removal of the rest of the muck-stacks that still posed a danger.

A subsequent enquiry into the causes of the disaster placed the blame entirely on the shoulders of the NCB. However, not one of its employees was ever prosecuted or fined. Not one!

The school clock was later recovered and can still be seen today. It stopped at the exact time that the slurry hit the school – 14 minutes past nine.

Isn’t it weird how those who are responsible for such scandalous events are never made to face the music? Over recent years we’ve experienced many similar scandals, such as the HIV/blood scandal, Stephen Lawrence, the Post Office, Hillsborough, Orgreave et al, and not one person responsible has ever been held to account.

Strange, that! And while ever those at the top are allowed to escape justice, predictable disasters and unnecessary deaths will continue to blight our lives.