Soundings: Lucky fibrillator
Authors: Colin Douglas
Journal: BMJ (2001)

Ihad just turned 12 and my first half term at grammar school was over. I caught the bus home with blessed relief. After leaving an enlightened country primary school I was making heavy weather of Latin primers, bullying prefects, and a firebrand nationalist Welsh teacher. I waltzed into the house looking forward to five days of happy freedom. It was not to be. Mother was in tears and father was white with fury. I read the headline of the South Wales Echo over father's shoulder and found out why. It was 21 October 1966, the day of the Aberfan disaster.

The statistics were grim: 144 were killed after a spoil heap slid down a mountainside into the mining village of Aberfan and destroyed houses and a junior school; 117 of the dead were children younger than I was. A week later the funerals began. Some of the families buried their lost in family graves, but 81 were buried together. Their two rows of graves became the memorial that stands today.

As the relief fund grew, so did the anger. The public inquiry revealed that the National Coal Board, a nationalised industry supposedly working for the common good, had ignored warnings about the instability of the spoil heap. Most squalid of all, even after being condemned by the inquiry, the NCB billed the relief fund £150 000 for removing the rest of the tip. It was not refunded until Tony Blair's government came to power.

In August 2001 I took my family to see my Welsh roots. We visited my old school and the University Hospital of Wales, where I qualified. The hospitals in Merthyr, Newport, and Pontypridd where I served my student attachments and house jobs are now gone, replaced by sparkling new edifices. With all the mines closed the valleys are now truly green. I don't grieve for them, unemployment or not. The number of former miners I saw die from the dust saw to that.

We took the Heads of the Valleys road back to England. As we passed Aberfan I realised it would soon be the 35th anniversary of the disaster. How dare I pass without visiting the memorial? This time my visit was different. Now I had children of my own. Watching my youngest son look solemnly at the photograph of a boy his own age on one of the headstones, I truly understood for the first time. When children die our reactions are visceral. The continuity of the family is threatened and we, the parents, are justifiably unforgiving. My tears finally came, just as my mother's did 35 years ago.

As we drove away sombrely there came a cheering reminder that life regenerates from disaster. Three little girls skipped happily along the pavement, two strapping teenage boys swaggered along cracking jokes and laughing.

Somehow the lesson of Aberfan went unlearnt. Since then football stands have burned, crowds have stampeded, planes have crashed, and a ferry has left harbour with its bow doors open. Meanwhile, the officials at fault try to discharge their public duty by denying responsibility. The biggest disaster has yet to reach its full manifestation. Variant CJD (or perhaps we should rename it zoonotic kuru, for it is a disease previously experienced only by cannibals) is now killing Britons of my children's generation and threatening the continuity of all our families. 

The common denominator in all these disasters was the “I'm in charge and I say there's no problem” mentality of governments. Once people reach high office they tend to believe that they are infallible and try to deal with problems by denying they exist in the first place.

The Bristol heart surgery tragedy has taught the medical profession the futility of this belief. We now know we must stop thinking like this. If you do not think it your responsibility, then make your own pilgrimage to Aberfan. You will not leave with any respect for those who grab at power and the status of high office, and then deny the responsibility that comes with it.