The Crown: Recapping every episode from the show’s third season
Episode 3: “Aberfan”
Episode 3 is a hard one to watch. It looks at the Aberfan Disaster, which took place on Friday, October 21, 1966, in Aberfan, South Wales, a small coal-mining Welsh town. Before the day of the disaster, coal workers find a sinkhole at the tip of the colliery, a heap of coal-mining waste that continues to descend after days of rain. The next day, a “wave of mud, sludge, and rubble” from the colliery heads toward Pantglas Junior School. This disaster results in the death of 116 children and 28 adults.
The episode opens with the small children of Pantglas Junior School memorizing the song “All Things Bright and Beautiful” for their school assembly, which is supposed to be on the day of the disaster. Viewers get to briefly know the children, which makes watching the school get hit by the wave of waste even more heartbreaking. This devastated the small mining town and is still in national memory 50 years later.
After the disaster, villagers go through the rubble to see if they could find any survivors, but few survivors are found. Villagers blamed Parliament and the National Coal Board for the event, since the concern over the colliery tip was brought to them plenty of times before, but villagers and coal workers were continuously ignored. The National Coal Board blames this incident on the rain, but the villagers had already notified the board that the colliery was too high before the rain started.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson encouraged Queen Elizabeth to visit the town, but according to her having a Sovereign visit a place in crisis would be a distraction and will do the people no good. We learn later that Queen Elizabeth was afraid that her inability to get emotional would read terrible to the nation, and she didn’t want to put herself in that situation. Lord Snowdon and Prince Philip visited before the Queen and their recounting of what they saw influenced her decision to visit. Hearing that two alpha men were almost brought to tears impacted Queen Elizabeth. The Queen got positive feedback for her visit but still received criticism for waiting so long. The end of the episode states that this was the Queen’s biggest regret.