How Two Labour Governments, Thirty Years Apart, Ripped-off the Aberfan Disaster Fund
March 1, 2010 – By mercia
In 1969 Harold Wilson’s Labour Government facilitated the theft of £150,000 from the Aberfan Disaster Fund concealing the evidence using their Thirty Year Rule; in 1967 Tony Blair’s regime returned the £150,000 taken from the fund – even though it was worth over £2 million at 1997 values.
At 9:15am on Friday, 21 October 1966 an estimated 150,000 cubic metres of water-saturated slurry broke away from a spoil tip, struck the village of Aberfan in South Wales, buried homes and a primary school – resulting in 144 deaths, including those of 116 young children.
The pupils of Pantglas Junior School had just left the school hall, where they had been singing “All Things Bright and Beautiful” during morning assembly, when the slurry engulfed the school.
The slag heap above Aberfan was owned by the National Coal Board (NCB), a Government controlled body created in 1946 by Clement Attlee’s Labour government following the nationalisation of Britain’s coal industry.
Following the tragedy a fund was set up and the public worldwide demonstrated their sympathy to the bereaved by donating over £1.6 million to the fund in just a few months; this being equivalent to some £22 million today allowing for inflation.
The chairman of the Labour Government’s NCB at the time of the disaster was Labour’s Lord Robens, who had served both as a senior union official and a Labour MP.
The subsequent inquiry into the disaster concluded that the Labour government’s NCB’s liability was “incontestable and uncontested” and that the NCB should have to bear the entire cost of removing the dangerous tips still situated above Aberfan; surprisingly Labour’s Lord Robens refused to authorise the NCB to pay the full cost of removal.
Labour’s Lord Robens then had £150,000, equivalent to over £2 million in today’s money, appropriated from the Aberfan Disaster Fund to cover the cost of removing the NCB’s slag heaps from above the village.
This was an action that was “unquestionably unlawful” under charity law
The Labour Government then took the extraordinary step of concealing sensitive information relating to both the inquiry and the private machinations of their NCB, ensuring that key documentation remained secret under their 30-year rule.
Between 1979 and 1997 Tory governments ignored pleas for the return of the stolen money, presumably to embarrass Labour.
In 1997 Blair’s incoming Labour government were shamed into repaying the money illegally taken from the Fund – not the £2 million that it was actually equivalent to at that time, but merely the much-devalued £150,000 originally stolen.
Finally, in 2007, the Welsh Assembly overruled Labour’s London regime by announcing the donation of £2 million of taxpayers’ money from their regional funds to the Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund.
The British National Party asks: Who else but a Labour government would steal money from a children’s disaster fund (with the possible exception of a Tory one)?
Disgusting