On Friday, October 21st, 1966, Aberfan, a small village in the Taf river valley, 5 miles from Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, changed forever when it entered the international news arena as a man-made tragedy of such horrific proportions occurred that over 40 years later the very mention of the name of that village still sends shivers down the spine of anybody was there or saw, listened to or read the news over that terrible weekend.

At 09:15, a mountain of coal from a colliery slag heap collapsed and slid down into the village of Aberfan, wreaking havoc in its path and within 5 minutes had destroyed a farm cottage, killing all three occupants therein, engulfed the junior school and destroyed 20 houses in the village before the horrendous landslide came to rest.

The school, Pantglas junior school, had just finished assembly by singing "All Things Bright & Beautiful" and the pupils were on their way back to their classrooms when the disaster struck. In total 116 children, approximately half of the school, mostly between the ages of 7 – 10, and 5 teachers would be among the final, devastating death toll of 144.

It had been sunny on the mountain but foggy in the village with visibility at approximately 50 yards. At first the rescue was held up by the fog, which had delayed 50 children travelling to Pantglas School by bus from the neighbouring village of Mount Pleasant.

Upon hearing the devastating news hundreds of people flocked to the village to try and help with the rescue operation and as people arrived at the scene, they could hear the cries of those still trapped on the fringe of the coal waste. Many local miners shovelled to get the debris clear and worked non-stop for 10 hours, including one whose young daughter was thought to be dead, but it was chaotic, with the untrained volunteer’s getting in the way of the trained rescue teams. Eventually about 2,000 rescuers worked under floodlights in the hunt for survivors, despite the danger caused by the still shifting slag tip, but nobody was rescued alive after 11 am on the day of the disaster. One of the biggest problems facing the rescue operation was getting vehicles to the site which was located in a cul-de sac. It took several days to recover all the bodies.

In one classroom 14 bodies were found and at another part of the school, the deputy head teacher, Mr Beynon, was found dead, clutching five children in his arms as if he had been protecting them. Meanwhile outside, mothers struggled deep in the mud, clamouring to find their children. Many were led away weeping. When the bodies were finally recovered, a mass funeral was held on Tuesday 25th October, and the 116 children were laid to rest on the hillside. George Thomas, Minister of State for Wales, at the time, said: "A generation of children has been wiped out. There is an abundance of tips of this sort in Wales, and we shall be looking for the possibilities that it could happen again."

The cause of the disaster was due to an underground spring and two days of heavy rain combining to cause the mountain of slag to loosen and eventually collapse. The collapse was found to have been caused by a build-up of water in the pile and, when a small rotational slip occurred, the disturbance caused the saturated, fine material of the tip to liquefy and flow down the mountain. In 1958, the tip had been sited on a known stream (as shown on earlier Ordnance Survey maps) and had previously suffered several minor slips. Its instability was known, both to colliery management and to tip workers, but very little was done about it.

On the 26th of October 1966, after resolutions by both Houses of Parliament, the Secretary of State for Wales, Cledwyn Hughes, appointed a Tribunal to inquire into the causes of, and circumstances relating to, the Aberfan disaster. Sir Herbert Edmund Davies, a respected south Wales barrister with vast experience of mining law, was appointed chairman.

There was controversy even before the Tribunal sat. The Attorney General warned about, and then imposed restrictions on speculation in the media about the causes of the disaster. This, together with accusations that earlier public inquiries into pit disasters were often whitewashes, intensified the already difficult circumstances of the Tribunal.

The Tribunal was heard initially at Merthyr Tydfil College of Further Education and then, after Christmas, at the College of Food Technology and Commerce in Cardiff, the Tribunal sat for 76 days. It was the longest Inquiry of its type in British history up to that date.

136 witnesses were interviewed and 300 exhibits examined. Evidence was given on everything from the history of mining in the area to the region's geological conditions. It emerged that there had long been local worries over the stability of the tip and that the chairman of the NCB's claim that the spring underneath the tip had not been known about was simply not true and that the coal board had no kind of tipping policy at all. Lord Robens, the NCB chairman, appeared dramatically in the final days of the Tribunal to give evidence and admitted that the coal board had been at fault. Had this admission been made at the beginning of the inquiry, much of what followed at the Tribunal would have been unnecessary. The Tribunal retired on the 28th of April 1967 to consider its verdict.

When the report was published on 3rd August 1967 despite local concerns to the contrary, it pulled no punches with its verdict, declaring: "The Aberfan Disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above. Not villains but decent men, led astray by foolishness or by ignorance or by both in combination, are responsible for what happened at Aberfan."

The Tribunal also concluded: "Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board. This is shared, though in varying degrees, among the NCB headquarters, the South Western Divisional Board, and certain individuals... The legal liability of the NCB to pay compensation of the personal injuries, fatal or otherwise, and damage to property is incontestable and uncontested."

However, the report made clear that it was a tale of "not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communications."

Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council and the National Union of Mineworkers were cleared of any blame for not following their concerns over the tip further. It was concluded that they had little option but to accept the assurances of the NCB that all was under control. Nine individual NCB employees and officials were singled out for particular criticism. Not one faced criminal proceedings for the negligence and incompetence displayed by the NCB.