Lord Snowdon Was the First Member of the Royal Family to Arrive at Aberfan
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Catching up on previous seasons of The Crown before diving into season five? If you're in search of information about the real life Aberfan disaster, read on for our story from 2019:
It has been said that Queen Elizabeth's biggest regret is her response to the Aberfan disaster. In 1966, tragedy struck the small Welsh village when a "colliery spoil tip" (a surplus of mining waste rock) collapsed on a school, killing 116 children and 28 adults.
It took the Queen eight days to visit, but another member of the royal family was there shortly after the news broke: Princess Margaret's husband, Lord Snowdon.
Snowdon, who grew up in Wales and felt a closeness to the community, arrived by train in Wales at 2 a.m., with a shovel in his bag, ready to help however he could.
"When I heard the news of the disaster on the wireless I felt I should be there because I was Welsh and thought the Welsh should stick together. So I just got on a train and went straight down," he told WalesOnline in 2006, for a story about the 40th anniversary of the tragedy.
He tried his best to be useful, but as it turns out, he didn't need that shovel; rather, his presence alone was a comfort.
"When you've got a disaster like that the last thing you want is to be in the way. People were still very much in shock," he said. "So you fade into the background and make cups of tea - never coffee - show your support and just listen. People wanted to talk. I didn't really do anything at all. I felt quite useless."
But despite feeling "useless," Snowdon made an impact on the Aberfan community, and on the Prime Minister at the time. According to Snowdon's biographer Anne de Courcy, Harold Wilson wrote specifically of Snowdon's efforts in his diary.
"The highest praise was for Lord Snowdon. He had gone spontaneously and instead of inspecting the site, he made it his job to visit the bereaved relatives, sitting holding the hands of a distraught father, sitting with the head of a mother on his should for half an hour in silence.
In another house he comforted an older couple who had lost thirteen children - in another where they were terribly upset he offered to make a cup of tea, went into the kitchen and returned with a tray with cups for them all. He helped an older man persuade his son, who was clutching something in his tightly clenched fist, to open his hand. It was a prefect’s badge, the only thing by which he had been able to identify his child."
When asked about Aberfan decades later, Snowdon was unsure about all the details of the day. "The horror of that first night stays with me to this day, although the details are now sketchy. I am very glad I went and I hope I was of some help," he said.
But what is clear is what he wrote to Princess Margaret back in 1966: "Darling, it was the most terrible thing I have ever seen."
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