Gresford Disaster was collected by Ewan MacColl from a young miner called Ford in the Sheffield area.(AL Lloyd Come All Ye Bold Miners) Does anybody know who wrote it?
Whoever it was seems to have followed the Enquiry pretty closely. It found the following breaches of the Coal Mines Act: failure to keep books, to maintain adequate ventilation, to supply separate means of egress where required, to cut off electric current when gas levels of more than 1.25% of gas was present. The management also failed to comply with requirements regarding telephone apparatus, coal dust, withdrawal of workmen and limitation of hours.
Most of these breaches were not disputed. The under-manager explaining why he had broken the regulations about shot firing said frankly "If all these men on the level of the main coal seam had to be withdrawn for every shot on that road, which I had considered quite safe personally, then the colliery would have had to close. The Act could never be complied with" 265 men (not 242 +3 as it says in the song) died. The law was broken in many ways. Nobody went to prison or was heavily fined. Britain's Coal, Margot Heinemann 1944. Something to ponder next time someone tells you that Health & Safety have gone mad.