Leon Rosselson 1966
Written following the Aberfan disaster of 1966 outside Cardiff where a coal mine waste tip collapsed and avalanched slurry into town, killing 109 children at Pantglas Junior School and 35 others. Rosselson wrote “I like playing fantasy games inventing the newspaper headlines I’d most like to see. ‘Lord Robens Buried by Slag Heap’ would be rather pleasing.” Robens was chairman of the National Coal Board in 1966 and showed a degree of indifference to the disaster. He proceeded to tell lies about it to the press before raiding the public disaster funds to cover the Coal Board’s own clean-up costs.
Martin Simpson & the Wilson Family: https://towerseyfestival.bandcamp.com/track/palaces-of-gold
https://towerseyfestival.bandcamp.com/track/palaces-of-gold
If the sons of company directors And judges’ private daughters Had to go to school in a slum school Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry With a view onto slag heaps and stagnant pools Had to file through corridors greyed with age And play in a crackpot concrete cage Chorus Buttons would be pressed Rules would be broken Strings would be pulled And magic words spoken Invisible fingers would mould Palaces of gold If prime ministers and advertising executives Royal personages and bank managers’ wives Had to live out their lives in dank rooms Blinded by smoke and the foul air of sewers Rot on the walls and rats in the cellars In rows of dumb houses like mouldering tombs Had to bring up their children and watch them grow In a wasteland of dead streets where nothing will grow I’m not suggesting any sort of a plot Everyone knows there’s not But you unborn millions might like to be warned That if you don’t want to be buried alive by slag heaps Pitfalls and damp walls and rat traps and dead streets Arrange to be democratically born The son of a company director Or a judge’s fine and private daughter