Today is the 100th anniversary of the Senghenydd mining disaster, which cost over 400 lives. Over 400 men who were working to feed their families were killed by an industry which took as much as it gave, and sometimes took more.
It was not the first accident, it was not the last, but it was the biggest. It might be nice though to remember the lives as well as the deaths; these men were brothers, cousins, sons, fathers. Many would have been English immigrants, as well as men born and raised in Wales, and men whose families were Welsh long before anyone could remember.
The industry shaped Wales, for bad, good, or simply neutral. The men mattered, even if it didn't always seem like it at the time.
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