It
was 9.15 in the morning October 21 1966 in Aberfan. The men in power
had long been warned of the threat. Letters had been sent repeatedly
from Merthyr Council to the National Coal Board. But the men in the
grey suits were not listening. The South Wales Valleys were
disfigured by slag heaps and dark coloured streams and rivers. Fifty
years on it is different the heaps have gone, the rivers and streams
run clear but the men in grey suits are still not listening. They
never do, power insulates, hates emotions and empathy.
The
brave men digging in the slag tipped covered school understood that,
At the inquest one father shouted after the verdict that “my child
was buried by the national coal board “ when we see on television
the brave people of Aleppo digging amongst the ruins we should see
what links us, what emotions we share. The grey men are still not
listening. The grey men were the men who left the slag heaps
untended, the rivers polluted, the threat to our children ignored.
These are the same types of men who sell arms, ignore opposition and
forget the vulnerable and weak.
Disasters
caused by the Coal Board or the Bombs that rain down on our cities
cause the same pain, the same destruction, the same loss and fear. We
are all challenged today to look beyond our differences, to
understand loss wherever it happens and to think how we would feel if
it was our community, our family and our town. The truth is that
authority must always be challenged, always made to account for what
it has done. Yesterday on that fount of Facebook compassion Port
Talbot Deabte and Argue I was called “morally bankrupt”, a cunt,
a sad human being and asked why I had raised Aberfan. I give you a
simple answer that to the end of my days I will always be critical,
challenge authority, believe that common sense is just a statistical
average and rebel. Ask then who is morally bankrupt? And always
choose to rebel and challenge authority......look within and check
the log in your own eyes.......
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