It was a dreary Friday morning in October of 1966 when Aberfan was marked indelibly. For three weeks, it had rained nonstop. At half past seven, a group of workers from Merthyr Vale colliery climbed the flanks of Merthyr Mountain, penetrating the mist that had descended on the village, where they were greeted at a clearance by seven great black heaps of spoil. What they saw next changed the history of Britain...
By revisiting the Aberfan disaster, this article argues that it triggered the emergence of a grassroots movement for environmental justice. My objectives are threefold: to amplify the differentiated voices of those who campaigned for land reclamation; to account for the political strategies and priorities upheld by the groups involved, underscoring conflicts and convergences between them; and to contextualize this struggle within the history of south Wales mining. Against this backdrop, I document the limitations of a cross-class coalition for sustainable urban regeneration which stemmed from the Aberfan disaster, thus contributing to the study of environmentalism in late 1960s and early 1970s Britain.
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We arrive at a deeper understanding of history when we pay attention to the feelings and emotions that survivors share with us
