These footnotes are a follow-up to our live discussion in episode four of the podcast, including a selection of points from my researches that we didn’t happen to include, as well as follow-up on any facts and questions that came up during our conversation with Neil.

Not listened to the episode yet? You’ll find it here

The Political Aftermath of Aberfan

There was much anger in the aftermath of the disaster because many felt that there had been warnings about the possible threat of the tips and that the tragedy could have been avoided. At the Coroner’s Inquest three days after the disaster one man who had lost his wife and two sons called out when their names were mentioned in a list of accidental deaths: “No, sir – buried alive by the National Coal Board”. In fact the report of the official enquiry that followed stated outright that “blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board” and that it was their “strong and unanimous view…that the Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented.” Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were ever prosecuted and the organisation was not fined.

Initially the NCB offered bereaved families £50 in compensation, but this was raised to £500 for each bereaved family; the organisation called the amount “a good offer”.

The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund (ADMF) was set up on the day of the disaster. It received nearly 88,000 contributions, totalling £1.75 million.
In 1967 the Charity Commission advised that any money paid to the parents of bereaved families would be against the terms of the trust deed, and suggested that no more than £500 should be paid. Members of the trust told the commission that £5,000 was to be paid to each family; the commission agreed, but stated that each case should be examined before payment “to ascertain whether the parents had been close to their children and were thus likely to be suffering mentally”!

Many were concerned that the remaining tips above the village remained unsafe. The residents petitioned the Secretary of State for Wales for the tips to be removed; they entered the Welsh Office and left a small pile of coal slurry on his table. The tips were removed only after a lengthy fight against resistance from the NCB and the government on the grounds of cost. The final clearing was funded by the government and the NCB, but not without an additional forced contribution of £150,000 being taken from the memorial fund. It was not until 1997 that the British government paid back the £150,000 to the fund, and in 2007 the Welsh Assembly donated £1.5 million to the fund and £500,000 to the Aberfan Education Charity as recompense for the money wrongly taken.

The Revlon Girl Sales Copy

During the play the Revlon Girl introduces the women to the beauty products with sales talk lifted verbatim from 1960’s Revlon ad copy. Initially the sales patter seems so ridiculously incongruous as to be very funny; however it also begins to resonate with the themes of the play, suggesting some truths in the cliches. It first draws the contrast between the imagined outside world and the reality of these working class women’s lives, a contrast made all the more obvious and poignant when in her first rehearsed sales pitch the Revlon Girl says “we have some fabulous products…whether you’re a career girl or a busy mum…”!

Later when she is helping Sian, she says: “who knows the secret hopes that warm your heart … the dreams you dream” – Sian of course has hopes and dreams that her husband doesn’t know about. Finally in the romantic sales pitch there is a truth that applies for the women in this play, about their individual self-respect and aspirations: “every woman deserves to be beautiful”.

It’s Not Just Lipstick – A Footnote to our Footnotes

Following the publication of our episode on The Revlon Girl, a listener was kind enough to send us a note that resonated so strongly with the theme of our play that notwithstanding the horror of the images described, I felt compelled to share. The passage comes originally from a book called Five Days that Shocked the World by Nicholas Best:

British Lieutenant Colonel Mervin W. Gonin, commander of the 11th Light Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C. was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945. In his diary, he gave a more graphic description of the effect of the lipstick:

 “It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick.Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering around about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post-mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on their arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.”

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