“This film attends to the underacknowledged aftermath and the sickening behaviour of the NCB and the government of the day – it must be done”
“This gut-wrenching hour-long film spent only a few minutes telling how a mountain of coal waste collapsed, engulfing the primary school in 100,000 tons of black slurry. It avoided the well-worn stories – the Queen’s tears, the donations raised by East End gangsters the Kray Twins – and instead focused on the efforts of the families to cope with their grief and prevent another disaster. The contempt [Sir Alf] Robens displayed for them was staggering. He took one look at the other six slag heaps lowering over the valley before announcing they posed no risk. The town had to fight for three years to have the danger removed… and even then, Robens made the townsfolk contribute £150,000 to the cost from their charity fund. Bereaved families were given £50, the equivalent of one month’s pay for a miner, by the Coal Board – though the Charity Commission initially required parents to show evidence that they had been ‘close to their children’. Oddly, this documentary was relegated to BBC2 across most of the country, except in Wales where it aired on BBC1. The rest of us got a repeat of Death In Paradise.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“This hour-long film attends to the underacknowledged aftermath and the sickening behaviour of the National Coal Board and the government of the day – it must be done. It remains unthinkable, inhumane not to. The suffering lives on and so does the duty to bear witness to it. It also throws into even starker relief the astonishing, appalling reactions of the NCB and the ministers, including and especially the secretary of state for Wales, George Thomas, who failed to stand up to the board and its chairman Sir Alf Robens, whose contemptuous attitude towards the village and its unfathomable grief was evident from day one, the Friday, when he went ahead with his installation ceremony as the first chancellor of the new University of Surrey instead of travelling immediately to Wales. He got there on Saturday evening instead. From the foot alone we may infer the anti-Hercules.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian
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