Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Images
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Disaster
- 2 The Village
- 3 The Coalfield
- 4 The Industry
- 5 The Colliery
- 6 The Aftermath
- 7 Sir Stafford Cripps
- 8 The Working Mine
- 9 The Inquiry
- 10 The Management
- 11 The Firemen
- 12 The Inspectorate
- 13 The Miners
- 14 The Union
- 15 The Reports
- 16 The Last Rites
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Nationalisation
- Appendix B The Davy Lamp
- Appendix C Butties
- Appendix D Owners
- Bibliography
- Index
16 - The Last Rites
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Images
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Disaster
- 2 The Village
- 3 The Coalfield
- 4 The Industry
- 5 The Colliery
- 6 The Aftermath
- 7 Sir Stafford Cripps
- 8 The Working Mine
- 9 The Inquiry
- 10 The Management
- 11 The Firemen
- 12 The Inspectorate
- 13 The Miners
- 14 The Union
- 15 The Reports
- 16 The Last Rites
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Nationalisation
- Appendix B The Davy Lamp
- Appendix C Butties
- Appendix D Owners
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Cripps's speech was heard in almost total silence. It was so brilliant, the Manchester Guardian commented, that both friends and foes disliked it, but he had earned himself a reprieve, unlike Bonsall and his colleagues, whose troubles were about to enter their next stage. Towards the end of March 1937 it was announced that proceedings were to be taken under the Coal Mines Regulations Act against the owners, manager and other officials of Gresford Colliery.
An almost inevitable consequence of the undisciplined manner in which the inquiry had been conducted was confusion in some minds between alleged breaches of the Regulations and actions which could be shown to have caused the accident and for which there was no evidence. The Solicitor General, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, took special care to make it plain at the outset that there were ‘no allegations that any of the defendants were responsible, by the acts with which they were charged, for the explosion’. The alleged breaches were of a technical nature, carrying small penalties even if proved, and there is no truth in the assertion made by two of Cripps's biographers that as a result of the revelations under Cripps's cross-examination of witnesses, a manager of the mine was imprisoned.
There were in all 42 summonses, some against the manager, the under-manager or firemen individually, others jointly against United Westminster and Wrexham Collieries Ltd and the manager; the charges, in various combinations and permutations, concerned failure to provide adequate ventilation, failure to cause air measurements to be taken, failure to keep records, allowing shot firing without treating with stone dust, firing shots in a manner likely to endanger the safety of persons employed in the mine, and so on. The hearings began at Wrexham County Petty Sessions on 20 April 1937 and continued for some days. Many of the dramatis personae from the inquiry reappeared and went through their lines again, but this time within the normal legal restraints on the admissibility of evidence: for example Sir Patrick Hastings, appearing for the defence, successfully objected to the hearing of evidence dealing with the explosion.
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- GresfordThe Anatomy of a Disaster, pp. 203 - 209Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999