Speaker 1: Welcome to noble blood, a production of I heart radio
Speaker 1: and grim and mild from Aaron maankie listener discretion advised.
Speaker 1: On September eighth, twenty twenty two, Elizabeth the Second Queen
Speaker 1: of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth realms, died at her
Speaker 1: summer residence Balmoral in Scotland at age ninety six. She
Speaker 1: had reigned for seven decades, the Queen through the space
Speaker 1: race and the dawn of the information age, the fall
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Internet.
Speaker 1: She hosted the Kennedys at Buckingham Palace, Rode Horses with
Speaker 1: Reagan and sent Dwight Eisenhower a recipe for scones. Fifteen
Speaker 1: prime ministers formed governments in her name, including Winston Churchill.
Speaker 1: Seventy years on the throne, for most people around the
Speaker 1: world she was the only monarch in memory, a constant presence,
Speaker 1: both physically on money and on stamps, but also in
Speaker 1: the popular imagination through jokes, references, songs and through every
Speaker 1: mother who had ever corrected the table manners of their
Speaker 1: child by saying would you too with your mouth open
Speaker 1: if you are having dinner with the Queen? The monarchy
Speaker 1: itself is a strange and antiquated institution. If you've listened
Speaker 1: to this podcast, you understand how odd it is when
Speaker 1: vast political power is arbitrarily inherited, and inherited by well
Speaker 1: people who, for all the pomp and ceremony that tries
Speaker 1: to turn them into deities, remain, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, just people with the normal jealousy's insecurities, vanities
Speaker 1: and mistakes that people make. The death of the Queen, though,
Speaker 1: isn't just the death of an individual, it's the death
Speaker 1: of a symbol, because in the twenty one century, with
Speaker 1: political power almost entirely granted to democratically elected representatives, the
Speaker 1: monarchy is symbolic. Like Sherlock Holmes or Paddington Bear, the
Speaker 1: Queen was an institution synonymous with Britishness. That Paddington comparison
Speaker 1: becomes all the more self evident with reports of mourners
Speaker 1: leaving marmalade sandwiches as tribute at the gates of Buckingham Palace.
Speaker 1: She's a symbol of British tea towel kitch, of a
Speaker 1: bygone era that we might falsely remember through Rose Tinted
Speaker 1: Downton Abbey Lenses. A Symbol of Happy Childhood Memories, Watch doctor, who,
Speaker 1: of course, there are many around the world who understand
Speaker 1: the queen fairly, I might add, was also a symbol
Speaker 1: of an imperialist and colonial power that caused tremendous pain
Speaker 1: across the globe. For better or for worse, the Queen
Speaker 1: was a fixture in every sense of the word. She
Speaker 1: was fixed, I think, in a world in which change
Speaker 1: is near constant and terrifyingly fast and the future is well,
Speaker 1: pretty scary, there was a comfort in thinking that this
Speaker 1: one thing was just there, remaining the same, not changing,
Speaker 1: not doing anything different, just there. The Queen understood that,
Speaker 1: that that fear of change and the need to cling
Speaker 1: to comfort was as much the purpose of the monarch
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century as anything else. Sometimes to
Speaker 1: her detriment, she refused to bend to modernity. She did
Speaker 1: not reveal much of her personality, let alone her political opinions.
Speaker 1: Whereas Princess Diana was able to captivate attention with her
Speaker 1: vulnerability and charisma, Queen Elizabeth had an almost opposite strength.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't burn bright necessarily, but she would burn along
Speaker 1: in action was her most powerful action. With that in mind,
Speaker 1: I want to draw your attention to one particular crisis
Speaker 1: moment in Queen Elizabeth's reign, a disaster in Wales that
Speaker 1: tested her instincts as a monarch. In her many years
Speaker 1: on the throne, the Queen would look back to the
Speaker 1: event that occurred in Aberfan in nineteen sixty six and
Speaker 1: call her response her greatest regret. The Chat Lenge of
Speaker 1: balancing spontaneous action with one's position as an a political
Speaker 1: fixture is only becoming harder in a world of constant
Speaker 1: access and social media. If the monarchy is going to
Speaker 1: survive after Queen Elizabeth's death, perhaps the new king, Charles
Speaker 1: the third, might learn from his mother, both from her
Speaker 1: successes and from her failures. I'm Dani Schwartz and this
Speaker 1: is noble blood. It was before a mid semester break,
Speaker 1: and so on October one, the students of punk glass
Speaker 1: junior school in Aberfun were only there for half day.
Speaker 1: They had raced to school in the rain, their boots
Speaker 1: squelching in the and hoods pulled up against the drizzle.
Speaker 1: That area of Wales is usually wet, getting over sixty
Speaker 1: inches of rain a year, and so it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been abnormal for them to have been shaking off their
Speaker 1: jackets and stomping the mud away as they settled into
Speaker 1: their seats to begin their day with a traditional hymn.
Speaker 1: All things bright and beautiful. It was, in other words,
Speaker 1: a perfectly normal day. Until the students heard a low rumble.
Speaker 1: The rumble became louder. It would later be described as
Speaker 1: like the roar of a jet engine. It was an
Speaker 1: avalanche approaching, tumbling down the hill nearby faster than anyone
Speaker 1: could have imagined, but not an avalanche of snow or Earth,
Speaker 1: but the slurry or waste from the coal mine nearby.
Speaker 1: It happened before anyone knew what to do. The school
Speaker 1: and much of the town was buried. The roar abated
Speaker 1: and the town became eerily silent. Aberfan became a mass grave.
Speaker 1: To understand what happened in Aberfan and why, it's important
Speaker 1: to go back in time. The whales became a coal
Speaker 1: mining center during the industrial revolution in the late seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Its True Coal Hey day was during the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: when more than a quarter of a million workers were
Speaker 1: making their livelihoods in coal mines. By the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: at the Merthyr Vale Colliery Outside Aberfan. That number was
Speaker 1: just down to eight thousand, but still it was how
Speaker 1: those eight thousand men made their living and supported their families.
Speaker 1: Coal mining is a messy business and part of the
Speaker 1: process is that waste rock is generated in the digging.
Speaker 1: The best way to deal with that way east is
Speaker 1: too elegantly enough stack it up in piles that are
Speaker 1: referred to as tips. In nineteen sixty six there were
Speaker 1: seven tips from the Mirth R Veil Colliery. The seventh,
Speaker 1: which had begun in nineteen fifty eight, atop a sandstone
Speaker 1: base above a natural spring on a hill above Aberfan,
Speaker 1: was more than one d feet tall. Of course, in
Speaker 1: retrospect it seems obvious that a massive waste pile shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been built atop a hill with a primary school
Speaker 1: just below. And citizens in Aberfan complained to the mine
Speaker 1: and to the National Coal Board. But nothing was done.
Speaker 1: And worse than nothing, the response back from the powers
Speaker 1: that be seemed to be saying, in not so many words,
Speaker 1: keep making a fuss and will close the mind altogether,
Speaker 1: and then will you make your living. And so the
Speaker 1: mining continued and the spoil tip on top of the
Speaker 1: hill continued to grow. Later after the disaster, the National
Speaker 1: Coal Board would face an examining tribunal who would report. Quote.
Speaker 1: The aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented, but
Speaker 1: it was a matter not of wickedness but of ignorance,
Speaker 1: ineptitude and a failure in communications. End. Quote. It was
Speaker 1: a rainy autumn in a rainy place that day on October,
Speaker 1: the sludge on the hill became swollen with water, thick
Speaker 1: and wet and black, and then the tip gave way.
Speaker 1: Bulldozers set to work immediately, trying to dig away the
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand cubic yards of black sludge
Speaker 1: that had consumed the primary school and the town. Firefighters,
Speaker 1: policemen and countless volunteers began digging at the earth with
Speaker 1: their bare hands, horror struck at the faint sounds of
Speaker 1: wailing they could hear coming from below. The men digging
Speaker 1: had come straight from their jobs at the mine. John Humphries,
Speaker 1: a Welsh journalist who had been reporting there that day,
Speaker 1: described them. Quote. There they were when I arrived, their
Speaker 1: faces still black save for the streaks of white from
Speaker 1: the sweat and the tears as they dug and prayed
Speaker 1: and wept. Most of them were digging for their own children.
Speaker 1: End Quote. The community continued their efforts at finding survivors,
Speaker 1: digging every single day in the wreckage of the school
Speaker 1: for a week straight. But after that first day no
Speaker 1: more survivors were found. It was a national tragedy. Twenty
Speaker 1: eight adults were killed in the disaster and one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixteen children, half of all of the children in
Speaker 1: the towne of Aberfan, were dead. Of course, in moments
Speaker 1: like that, of senseless loss and unimaginable grief, the monarchy
Speaker 1: is there to offer comfort and to help draw attention
Speaker 1: to relief efforts. And Prince Philip arrived in Wales the
Speaker 1: very next day, along with the prime minister at the time,
Speaker 1: Harold Wilson, and Lord Snowden, the husband of Princess Margaret.
Speaker 1: But the Queen wasn't there. The question is why? The
Speaker 1: answer is, well, we're not sure. It seems a decision
Speaker 1: was made and that decision was to dispatch Prince Philip
Speaker 1: in the Queen Place. But whose decision was it? According
Speaker 1: to the Queen's former private secretary, Lord Charteris, the Queen
Speaker 1: had been given bad advice. Quote. We told her to
Speaker 1: stay away until the preliminary shock had worn off. End. Quote.
Speaker 1: The thought was that if the Queen went while the
Speaker 1: relief efforts were still underway, it might cause a distraction
Speaker 1: divert resources among police or security that otherwise might go
Speaker 1: toward digging still. Another adviser presents a different picture of
Speaker 1: the discussions happening within the royal inner circle. Biographer Robert
Speaker 1: Lacy quoted an adviser who said we kept presenting the arguments,
Speaker 1: but nothing we said could persuade her. STOICISM and aversion
Speaker 1: to emotional gestures was a feature of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
Speaker 1: not a bug, as they say. She was averse to
Speaker 1: doing anything that might have an outsized reaction, even if
Speaker 1: the reaction might be good, because it risks the possibility
Speaker 1: that it might not be. Consider that Elizabeth's Moore, let's say,
Speaker 1: Les a fair sister, Princess Margaret, offhandedly remarked that people
Speaker 1: should be donating toys to Aberfan for the remaining children.
Speaker 1: The consequence of Princess Margaret's remarks was that toys overwhelmed
Speaker 1: the town, overflowing from the cinema and the donation centers
Speaker 1: to the point where it was a distraction from relief efforts.
Speaker 1: If you do nothing, the queen seemed to believe, then
Speaker 1: you can do nothing wrong, except, of course, sometimes you can.
Speaker 1: In action is also action, and as the days crept
Speaker 1: by and the relief efforts became exhausted, eventually it was
Speaker 1: decided that the Queen would visit Aberfan. After all, it
Speaker 1: was eight days after the disaster. The deaths were counted
Speaker 1: and there was no more digging. When the Queen arrived,
Speaker 1: a young girl approached and presented her with a posy.
Speaker 1: The note attached red from the remaining children of Aberfan.
Speaker 1: According to a number of the morning families, the Queen's
Speaker 1: visit was a great comfort. She stood with the parents
Speaker 1: who had lost their children, listen to them, made them
Speaker 1: feel less anonymous, less alone. The crown was here with them.
Speaker 1: The country saw their pain. That was what her visit symbolized. Still,
Speaker 1: she had waited eight days. Maybe it would have been
Speaker 1: a distraction if she had come earlier. Maybe the grief
Speaker 1: would have been overwhelming and the relief efforts too chaotic
Speaker 1: to accommodate a royal visit. But still, sometimes you can
Speaker 1: only regret and think what you might have done differently.
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth the second certainly did. The Queen would return
Speaker 1: three more times the village of Aberfan in her reign.
Speaker 1: Though the power of the monarchy is largely symbolic, now,
Speaker 1: that power is still legitimate. Case in point, during one
Speaker 1: of her later visits, it was revealed that the government
Speaker 1: had used the Aberfan disaster fund in order to fund
Speaker 1: the removal of the six remaining slag tips. That sounds
Speaker 1: all well and good, but that money had actually been
Speaker 1: set up explicitly to help the bereaved families. Queen Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: visit helped bring attention to that corruption, which led to
Speaker 1: the money be repaid to those families. On her final
Speaker 1: visit to Aberfan, in against the advice of her advisers,
Speaker 1: the Queen insisted that she take off in a helicopter.
Speaker 1: The ground was too wet, they said, and the weather
Speaker 1: too erratic, but she insisted because she thought that the
Speaker 1: children would like to see it, and so off in
Speaker 1: a helicopter she went. I highlight the Aberfan disaster because
Speaker 1: it captures at once what I believe to be the
Speaker 1: monarchy's greatest weakness, but also their strength. Its weakness is
Speaker 1: that its stability comes from inaction the royal family can
Speaker 1: never be dazzling or unexpected. There can be no great victories,
Speaker 1: because to achieve any victory is to risk defeat. The
Speaker 1: Queen understood that more than anyone, that her role was
Speaker 1: to be less a person, with whatever one or desires
Speaker 1: came from that, and instead be an institution, to let
Speaker 1: her personhood be subsumed by the role. That was her
Speaker 1: sacrifice and that was her duty. Elizabeth the second was
Speaker 1: never supposed to be queen. Her father was King George
Speaker 1: the fifth, second son, and so her uncle had been
Speaker 1: in line for the throne. He was King Edward the eighth,
Speaker 1: but for several reasons that we've already discussed on this
Speaker 1: very podcast, he was entirely unsuited to the position. He
Speaker 1: abdicated in order to marry an American divorcee, in what
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's family saw as a fundamental betrayal, a selfish dereliction
Speaker 1: of duty. She would never do anything like that. She
Speaker 1: would honor the institution of the crown at all costs.
Speaker 1: She would do her duty, withstanding whatever small humiliations and
Speaker 1: criticisms it required. She would be the human statue that
Speaker 1: the nation could look to so that she could be
Speaker 1: able to achieve what I believe is the monarchy's greatest strength,
Speaker 1: to make people feel seen comforted. If the Queen represents
Speaker 1: the entire nation, when she is there with you, you
Speaker 1: know that the nation is with you too. That's the
Speaker 1: story of Queen Elizabeth the second and the Aberfan disaster,
Speaker 1: but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the human side of the
Speaker 1: late Queen. The Queen is such an institution that sometimes
Speaker 1: it's easy to forget that she was in fact a
Speaker 1: real human being. There's one anecdote I love, possibly Apocryphal,
Speaker 1: but that shows her sense of humor. The Queen's favorite
Speaker 1: spot was balmoral. The castle located in the Scottish countryside,
Speaker 1: and often she would walk across the hills to take
Speaker 1: in the views. One morning she was walking when she
Speaker 1: encountered a pair of hiking tourists. Incredibly, they didn't recognize
Speaker 1: her and made conversation. They heard that the queen sometimes
Speaker 1: stayed around there. Was that true? Yes, she replied it was.
Speaker 1: The tourists became excited. Have you ever met her, they asked. No,
Speaker 1: the Queen deadpanned. She pointed to her guard, who was
Speaker 1: standing nearby at a respectful distance, but he has yeah.
Speaker 1: Noble blood is a production of I heart radio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble blood is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Danishwartz. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston,
Speaker 1: Hannah's wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by Rema Il Kali, with supervising producer
Speaker 1: Josh thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I heart radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.