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109 kids died in that. Holy shit. And the senior officials got off with a slap on the wrist. That reads like a complete failure of the government. Why did th

109 kids died in that. Holy shit. And the senior officials got off with a slap on the wrist. That reads like a complete failure of the government. Why did the right people not hang for that?

defrost 3y ago
The people on the right at that time (UK 1966) didn't hang as they were of an effectively protected capitalist caste with no regulation to hold them to account. If you scroll down the wiki link you can see that the changes to the Mines and Quarries Act ultimately lead to things such as the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974) which provided some teeth with which to bite the owners that cut corners, paid off inspectors, etc. Swings and roundabouts though, a little while later came the Miners' Strike of 1984-1985 which was easily one of the most bitter industrial disputes Britain has ever seen. a turning point in British history. Miners left their pits to fight the attempt of the Thatcher government to close the collieries, break the miners’ union and the labour movement in general, and open the way to a free market economy in which deregulated financial capitalism would be set free by the Big Bang of 1986. The full force of the police, the courts and the media were mobilised to defeat the miners, culminating with the battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984. Thousands of miners were arrested, fined, imprisoned or sacked, some never to work again. https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-history https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-histo... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/40-years-miners-strike-long-shadow-uk-politics-pit-closures https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/40-yea... All part of the delicate balance between those many hordes wanting good wages and working conditions and those few that want all the profits.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  In retrospect, it was a battle that didn't matter. There were no profits to be had on either side - mining is best done mostly by machines, and will always be undercut by places with cheap labour and lax environmental regulations. The UK would never be able to compete. And besides, by the 80's it was already becoming clear that coal wasn't the future.
  - defrost 3y ago
    You seem unfamiliar with mining. The UK and the US aren't really big players, the single largest market for mining stocks is the Toronto TSX by a long shot - many loosely commonwealth trans national companies (Australia, Canada, South Africa, etc) with Russian, Chinese, Brazilian partners, etc. Machines play a big part - Western Australia mines almost a billion tonner of iron ore alone per annum with a tiny population, but cheap labour and lax environmental regs don't play nearly as great a part as you might think. Long term stability on 20 to 50 year time scales is pretty desirable on projects with forward capital investments of 300+ million dollars, high skill levels and good wages improve success rates, the larger mining companies have been trending more and more toward being accountable with respect to populations affected and post operation rennovation .. although that's a shift from don't care and never so .. <shrug> From a political "how society works" PoV the mining strikes and Thatcher push backs weren't about the coal either .. it was a reflection on how the new neoliberal 80s Tories intended to deal with those not aligned with their vision. There were other directions to turn labour forces of the 80s toward, but the vision as such for that time was propert development pyramids, fintech, and all that jazz. Better to be a barrow boy in The City than a gay dancing coal miner.
- mikhailfranco 3y ago
  So offer the mine to the miners, if they each put up GBP nx100k capital. See if they really want the risk of loss/mortgage/debt in return for a job. Perhaps they know something beneficial that management doesn't? Workers can be capitalists if they know the business and want to take a risk. Get the responses, end of story. Yet it led to a huge (literal) battle? It was all political: an attack on the gov by the communist miners' union, backed by the Labour Party. It was never about economics, which were obviously terminal. Everybody knew that, on both sides.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > the communist miners' union Get a grip. Break free of whatever bicameral Red V. Blue blinkered global view you have - there are more shades across the world than Joe McCathy dreamed of.
    - mikhailfranco 3y ago
      Anyone who knows that an industry is uneconomic, but wants the gov to own and run the industry, just to lose taxpayer money and pay wages to his union is a communist. (The barrier for gov ownership is slightly lower than a capitalist, because the gov has to pay transitory unemployment benefit to those put out of work, and it was still not economic). Actually, that person is not just a small-c communist interested in the community, but a big-C Marxist, who wants the gov to lose money for his selfish reasons. Are you perhaps, tentatively, obliquely, hinting, in a roundabout fashion, with elliptical prose, that Arthur Scargill was not a communist..... fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labour_Party_and_retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labo...
      - defrost 3y ago
        Riiiiight. (yawn). Have you ever done any manual work for a living? Worked with any miners in trade unions? Met any actual communists? Maybe worked in Rio Tinto as a labour negotiator? Some of that might help you sound more grounded an less disconnected from the world as it is. Scargill was a commnist in his youth, he veered elsewhere on the left later in life - but more to the point here, Scargill was not the trade union, he was a single human being. Not all miners in trade unions are communist, far from it; and not all actual communists are miners (likely very few), we're in a world of Venn diagrams here and broad reductionist brush strokes don't achieve much beyond polarisation
- penteract 3y ago
  > The people on the right at that time (UK 1966) didn't hang as they were of an effectively protected capitalist caste with no regulation to hold them to account. Which people are you referring to? Since the National Coal Board was running the mine, I wouldn't have expected capitalists to be to blame, and the Labour party were in power at the time of the disaster. I'm not very familiar with this, so may be missing something.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > Since the National Coal Board was running the mine, I wouldn't have expected capitalists to be to blame, and the Labour party were in power at the time of the disaster. Look at what people and organisations do and not what they call themselves; Coal reserves were nationalised during the war in 1942 and placed under the control of the Coal Commission, but the mining industry remained in private hands. So UK centralised control of divying up resources, mine owners running the operations (and the usual UK historic overlap between capitalists and Peers with seats in the house of Lords, etc.) Straight out of the gate, the NCB was headed up by Lord Hyndley [1] as chairman (director of the Bank of England between 1931-1945, managing director of Powell Duffryn Ltd, collieries, 1931-1946). NCB actions in the early days were to maximise returns using public funds for improvements that benefitted private owners with little improvement in safety or working conditons: the NCB spent more than £550 million on major improvements and new sinkings, much of it to mechanise the coal-getting process underground and by 1957 Britain's collieries were producing cheaper coal than anywhere in Europe. The next chairman was nominally a socialist, trade unionists, man of the people etc. but that rapidly proved to be on paper and for show - born from merchants and placed as an official in the Allied Workers union more as a representative of shopkeepers than shopworkers, he proved to be the ideal paper tiger to head the NCB Alfred Robens, later elevated to Baron Robens of Woldingham, loved the trappings of power and oversaw policy implementations that originated from mine owners and government policy before his tenure; substantial cuts in the mining industry and neglect of spoil heaps, things that lead directly to the Aberfan disaster. And that was the the first two tenures of the NCB - nominally running coal for "the benefit of the people", actually running coal to maximise throughput and profits for owners. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hindley,_1st_Viscount_Hyndley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hindley,_1st_Viscount_Hyn... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robens,_Baron_Robens_of_Woldingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robens,_Baron_Robens_of... Those responsible, then, include all the mine owners with a footprint in the House of Lords, all the various enablers on the committees that set policy for the NCB ala Yes, Minister, the founding chairman, and the second chairman who was parachuted with gifts into an established front.
red_admiral 3y ago
The government outsourced managing Aberfan and most other mines to a National Coal Board. The tribunal who investigated the disaster was very critical of said board, but it wasn't the done thing in those days to go after senior officials. Indeed, the disaster was one of the main inputs that led to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the act under which senior officials nowadays can be (and sometimes are) prosecuted for negligence leading to deaths.

109 kids died in that. Holy shit. And the senior officials got off with a slap on the wrist. That reads like a complete failure of the government. Why did the right people not hang for that?

defrost 3y ago

The people on the right at that time (UK 1966) didn't hang as they were of an effectively protected capitalist caste with no regulation to hold them to account. If you scroll down the wiki link you can see that the changes to the Mines and Quarries Act ultimately lead to things such as the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974) which provided some teeth with which to bite the owners that cut corners, paid off inspectors, etc. Swings and roundabouts though, a little while later came the Miners' Strike of 1984-1985 which was easily one of the most bitter industrial disputes Britain has ever seen. a turning point in British history. Miners left their pits to fight the attempt of the Thatcher government to close the collieries, break the miners’ union and the labour movement in general, and open the way to a free market economy in which deregulated financial capitalism would be set free by the Big Bang of 1986. The full force of the police, the courts and the media were mobilised to defeat the miners, culminating with the battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984. Thousands of miners were arrested, fined, imprisoned or sacked, some never to work again. https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-history https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-histo... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/40-years-miners-strike-long-shadow-uk-politics-pit-closures https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/40-yea... All part of the delicate balance between those many hordes wanting good wages and working conditions and those few that want all the profits.

londons_explore 3y ago
In retrospect, it was a battle that didn't matter. There were no profits to be had on either side - mining is best done mostly by machines, and will always be undercut by places with cheap labour and lax environmental regulations. The UK would never be able to compete. And besides, by the 80's it was already becoming clear that coal wasn't the future.
- defrost 3y ago
  You seem unfamiliar with mining. The UK and the US aren't really big players, the single largest market for mining stocks is the Toronto TSX by a long shot - many loosely commonwealth trans national companies (Australia, Canada, South Africa, etc) with Russian, Chinese, Brazilian partners, etc. Machines play a big part - Western Australia mines almost a billion tonner of iron ore alone per annum with a tiny population, but cheap labour and lax environmental regs don't play nearly as great a part as you might think. Long term stability on 20 to 50 year time scales is pretty desirable on projects with forward capital investments of 300+ million dollars, high skill levels and good wages improve success rates, the larger mining companies have been trending more and more toward being accountable with respect to populations affected and post operation rennovation .. although that's a shift from don't care and never so .. <shrug> From a political "how society works" PoV the mining strikes and Thatcher push backs weren't about the coal either .. it was a reflection on how the new neoliberal 80s Tories intended to deal with those not aligned with their vision. There were other directions to turn labour forces of the 80s toward, but the vision as such for that time was propert development pyramids, fintech, and all that jazz. Better to be a barrow boy in The City than a gay dancing coal miner.
mikhailfranco 3y ago
So offer the mine to the miners, if they each put up GBP nx100k capital. See if they really want the risk of loss/mortgage/debt in return for a job. Perhaps they know something beneficial that management doesn't? Workers can be capitalists if they know the business and want to take a risk. Get the responses, end of story. Yet it led to a huge (literal) battle? It was all political: an attack on the gov by the communist miners' union, backed by the Labour Party. It was never about economics, which were obviously terminal. Everybody knew that, on both sides.
- defrost 3y ago
  > the communist miners' union Get a grip. Break free of whatever bicameral Red V. Blue blinkered global view you have - there are more shades across the world than Joe McCathy dreamed of.
  - mikhailfranco 3y ago
    Anyone who knows that an industry is uneconomic, but wants the gov to own and run the industry, just to lose taxpayer money and pay wages to his union is a communist. (The barrier for gov ownership is slightly lower than a capitalist, because the gov has to pay transitory unemployment benefit to those put out of work, and it was still not economic). Actually, that person is not just a small-c communist interested in the community, but a big-C Marxist, who wants the gov to lose money for his selfish reasons. Are you perhaps, tentatively, obliquely, hinting, in a roundabout fashion, with elliptical prose, that Arthur Scargill was not a communist..... fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labour_Party_and_retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labo...
    - defrost 3y ago
      Riiiiight. (yawn). Have you ever done any manual work for a living? Worked with any miners in trade unions? Met any actual communists? Maybe worked in Rio Tinto as a labour negotiator? Some of that might help you sound more grounded an less disconnected from the world as it is. Scargill was a commnist in his youth, he veered elsewhere on the left later in life - but more to the point here, Scargill was not the trade union, he was a single human being. Not all miners in trade unions are communist, far from it; and not all actual communists are miners (likely very few), we're in a world of Venn diagrams here and broad reductionist brush strokes don't achieve much beyond polarisation
penteract 3y ago
> The people on the right at that time (UK 1966) didn't hang as they were of an effectively protected capitalist caste with no regulation to hold them to account. Which people are you referring to? Since the National Coal Board was running the mine, I wouldn't have expected capitalists to be to blame, and the Labour party were in power at the time of the disaster. I'm not very familiar with this, so may be missing something.
- defrost 3y ago
  > Since the National Coal Board was running the mine, I wouldn't have expected capitalists to be to blame, and the Labour party were in power at the time of the disaster. Look at what people and organisations do and not what they call themselves; Coal reserves were nationalised during the war in 1942 and placed under the control of the Coal Commission, but the mining industry remained in private hands. So UK centralised control of divying up resources, mine owners running the operations (and the usual UK historic overlap between capitalists and Peers with seats in the house of Lords, etc.) Straight out of the gate, the NCB was headed up by Lord Hyndley [1] as chairman (director of the Bank of England between 1931-1945, managing director of Powell Duffryn Ltd, collieries, 1931-1946). NCB actions in the early days were to maximise returns using public funds for improvements that benefitted private owners with little improvement in safety or working conditons: the NCB spent more than £550 million on major improvements and new sinkings, much of it to mechanise the coal-getting process underground and by 1957 Britain's collieries were producing cheaper coal than anywhere in Europe. The next chairman was nominally a socialist, trade unionists, man of the people etc. but that rapidly proved to be on paper and for show - born from merchants and placed as an official in the Allied Workers union more as a representative of shopkeepers than shopworkers, he proved to be the ideal paper tiger to head the NCB Alfred Robens, later elevated to Baron Robens of Woldingham, loved the trappings of power and oversaw policy implementations that originated from mine owners and government policy before his tenure; substantial cuts in the mining industry and neglect of spoil heaps, things that lead directly to the Aberfan disaster. And that was the the first two tenures of the NCB - nominally running coal for "the benefit of the people", actually running coal to maximise throughput and profits for owners. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hindley,_1st_Viscount_Hyndley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hindley,_1st_Viscount_Hyn... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robens,_Baron_Robens_of_Woldingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robens,_Baron_Robens_of... Those responsible, then, include all the mine owners with a footprint in the House of Lords, all the various enablers on the committees that set policy for the NCB ala Yes, Minister, the founding chairman, and the second chairman who was parachuted with gifts into an established front.

red_admiral 3y ago

The government outsourced managing Aberfan and most other mines to a National Coal Board. The tribunal who investigated the disaster was very critical of said board, but it wasn't the done thing in those days to go after senior officials. Indeed, the disaster was one of the main inputs that led to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the act under which senior officials nowadays can be (and sometimes are) prosecuted for negligence leading to deaths.