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
15 - The Reports
- 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
On 14 December 1934, the twenty-eighth day of the hearing, the last of 185 witnesses, some of whom had appeared more than once, left the witness chair. Henderson thanked the Commission for the patience and consideration it had displayed throughout, and Sir Henry Walker in particular for ‘the very tactful, the very skilful way … in which you have steered us all clear of the rocks of discord that appear from time to time as one makes one's way along the channels of advocacy’, and the inquiry was adjourned sine die. It had heard much evidence of scandalous incompetence and flagrant flouting of the law, but none bearing directly on the question it was required to answer: what was the cause of the accident? It could move no nearer to a solution of the problem until an inspection could be made of the devastated districts. These were still firmly sealed off and remained so while a bitter campaign was waged by the miners, who staked their reputations on gaining access to them, against the owners, who were just as stubbornly determined to keep them out, and could count on the tacit acquiescence or, as the miners furiously asserted, the active collusion of the Inspectorate in their obstructive tactics.
The basis of the opposition to any attempt to re-enter the Dennis Section was put in early October in a letter to Edward Jones, the miners’ agent, from his opposite number in the North Wales branch of the National Association of Colliery Managers: if the places where the fire had occurred were to be exposed to a current of fresh air before they had cooled down, and while the whole Section was full of firedamp, there could well be a renewed outbreak of fires and explosions with further loss of life among men caught below ground at the time.
Those responsible for the conduct of operations were of course fully alive to the danger and agreed that the pit must remain sealed at least until after the inquiry had been concluded. An extreme view, not widely canvassed but gaining ground in some quarters, was that no attempt would ever be made to re-enter the destroyed Dennis Section of the colliery.
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- GresfordThe Anatomy of a Disaster, pp. 181 - 202Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999