Gresford: The Anatomy of a Disaster

The worst disaster of the North Wales coalfield – one of the worst in the history of the British mining industry – occurred in 1934, killing 256 men and devastating a small community. Stanley Williamson’s account draws on his own interviews with the bereaved and those involved in the rescue, as well as the reports of the subsequent inquiry and the records of the North Wales Miners’ Association. Williamson covers the inquiry, and the important issues it raised, in detail and charts the way in which Sir Stafford Cripps, representing the North Wales miners, launched an attack on the whole social and industrial system of which the industry was a part.