Muristek
From the Aberfan disaster to late 90s pop-culture, this vivid oral history brings a tumultuous era to life
In the mid-1960s, two disastrous events happened in Wales. One was the flooding of the Tryweryn valley in the north of the country, to create a reservoir that would supply water to Liverpool – an unbelievably arrogant act that destroyed the Welsh-speaking community of Capel Celyn. The other was the catastrophe that occurred in October 1966 in Aberfan, the south Wales pit village where, despite clear warnings of looming danger, a vast spoil tip slid down a hillside behind Pantglas Junior School, killing 144 people, 116 of them children. Both episodes shone harsh light on the neglect and condescension that characterised the British state’s treatment of a country of 3 million people. For example, having been informed of the Aberfan tragedy, the chairman of the National Coal Board decided not to drop everything and visit the scene, but keep his afternoon engagement to be invested as the first chancellor of Surrey University.
In this rich and moving history of modern Wales, Tryweryn and Aberfan are portrayed as the low points that led to the revival and protection of the Welsh language, and the eventual arrival of political devolution. But its 500-odd pages contain much more, thanks partly to its author’s inspired decision to write an oral history – a form, he says, “that favours the grain of the voice and the grain of the Welsh voice in particular”. It also allows the text to spin out into compelling digressions. Better still, though the experiences of the Welsh-speaking west and north of Wales are very different from those rooted in the anglophone, (post-) industrial south, common themes of mistreatment and resistance come to life in the form of first-hand anecdotes. Richard King’s 90-plus interviewees range from the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock and that ex-resident of Lambeth Palace Rowan Williams, through a multitude of trailblazing activists, to such cultural figures as the writer Rachel Trezise and Manic Street Preachers. All of them capably join the personal to the political.
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