Disaster Fund
The public demonstrated their sympathy by donating money, with little idea of how it would be spent. Donations flooded in to the appeal and within a few months, nearly 90,000 contributions had been received, totalling £1,606,929 (2008:£21.4 million).
The management of this fund caused considerable controversy over the years. Many aspects of the aftermath of the Aberfan Disaster remained hidden until 1997, when the British Public Records Office released previously embargoed documents under the thirty year rule. These documents revealed new information about the machinations of Lord Robens, the NCB and the Charity Commission in the wake of the Aberfan Disaster.
At one point the Charity Commission planned to insist that before any payment was made to bereaved parents, each case should be reviewed to ascertain if the parents had been close to their children and were thus likely to be suffering mentally. At another meeting, the Commission threatened to remove the Trustees of the Disaster Fund or make a financial order against them if they went ahead with making grants to parents of children who had not been physically injured that day, and the Trustees were forced to abandon these payments.
Although the Davies Report had found that the NCB's liability was "incontestable and uncontested" and it was widely felt that the NCB should have to bear the entire cost of removing the dangerous tips above Aberfan, Robens refused to pay the full cost, thereby putting the Trustees of the Disaster Fund under "intolerable pressure". Robens then "raided" the Fund for £150,000 to cover the cost of removing the tips – an action that was "unquestionably unlawful" under charity law – and the Charity Commission took no action to protect the Fund from Robens's dubious appropriation of funds.
Today, an important part of this fund is still alive and running. The Disaster Committee set up a fund to help students. This means that the output of the Committee's efforts is still available for students from the village or for children whose parents were living in Aberfan at the time of the disaster.
Shortly after the disaster children and staff at the primary school at Spellbrook, near Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, collected £20 16s for trees to be planted on a nearby tip. The forest plantation remains to this day.
Read more about this topic: Aberfan Disaster
Famous quotes containing the words disaster and/or fund:
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Mother,
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Murmuring, in her sleep as it seemed, the ancient slogan
Noblesse oblige.”
—Josephine Miles (1911–1985)
“School success is not predicted by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social measures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.”
—Daniel Goleman (20th century)