Why I shall never forget the little children whose lives were extinguished in Aberfan

The late Cliff Michelmore, a fine broadcaster, known for his cheerful demeanour, said it all in one poignant minute: "Never in my life have I ever seen anything like this; I hope that I shall never, ever see anything like it again."

Now, fifty years on, it is with reluctance that I even comment about that dreadful day in Aberfan, for I know that the parents of the children who died that day have, rightly, pointed out that they remember their lost children every day, not just on the anniversaries of the disaster.

Members of the generation before mine often talk of remembering where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I was too young to remember that; Aberfan was my 'Kennedy moment'. I was of similar age to most of the 116 children who died. Just as I and children the world over identified with the children in Enid Blyton's adventures, so too, for the first time, I identified with children in tragedy: the tragedy that overtook the pupils at Pantglas Junior School.

I do not wish to make any claim that my grief was any different to that felt by millions of others, but Aberfan has stayed in my mind all these years. As a classic, stiff upper lip, product of an English public school, I am not given to shows of emotion, but the very thought of the Aberfan disaster still brings tears to my eyes and has done so for as long as I can recall.

At school in leafy, posh, Llandaff, a few miles downstream from Aberfan, my world was a very different one from those children further up the Taff Valley. The main connection, for me, was the River Taff itself - filthy black from coal dust and other pollution from up the valley. The first time I travelled, in a car, up the valleys, I was shocked by the grim terraces, mines and coal slag heaps. It was just a few miles away, but it was like a foreign country to me.

The more I have learnt about those famous coal-mining communities, the more I have been impressed by their sense of community - that combination of coal mine, chapel, male voice choir, rugby, miners' institute, social club, trades union and, of course, the narrow constraints of the valleys themselves, created communities more tightly knit than perhaps any other in the United Kingdom.

These were communities that knew tragedy and hardship all too well, as those glorious, but mournful Welsh hymns convey so poignantly. The Aberfan disaster seemed to me then, as it does now, like tragedy heaped upon tragedy - simply too awful for words.

The dignity with which the people of Aberfan have coped with the legacy of that disaster is a tribute to the strength of their community. I doubt if any less close knit community would have handled its loss so well.

Looking at the walls of the beautiful memorial garden that now stands at Pantglas School, I see immediately that they are made of the same river-washed, rounded stones as the walls of our house in Llandaff. After the Aberfan disaster I was fortunate enough to return, of course, to normal schoolboy life; in the playground I would join the other boys playing Daleks, saying 'exterminate, exterminate' in our best impressions of Dalek-speak. Years later, I learnt that Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, had, like me, been born in Llandaff. I have no doubt that the 116 little children who died in Aberfan on 21st October 1966 would have been playing the same games in the days before the disaster.

The dignity of the people of Aberfan is in contrast to the shameful behaviour of Lord Robens and the National Coal Board. Their theft - there is no other adequate word for it - of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the fund set up for the victims' families, is a reminder that it is not only the private sector that produces pond life such as Sir Philip and Lady Green, the public sector is every bit as capable of behaving disgracefully.

My heart goes out to the people of Aberfan, today - and every day.

Crumbs from a patisserie-filled land

Cafe Gondree, by Pegasus Bridge

Taking a short break from this 'cake-filled island' so despised by Emma Thompson and her ilk, I recently ventured across the English Channel to Normandy, following - geographically at any rate - in the path of the brave Allied soldiers who liberated France from National Socialism in 1944.

Appropriately enough, our first stop was at a Cafe - the tiny but famous Cafe Gondree, the first place in France to be liberated on D-Day. There were no cakes for breakfast, but plenty of crumbs fell from the delicious croissants that the legendary Arlette Gondree provided. The courage and brilliance of Major John Howard and his men is simply awe inspiring. Visiting with the incomparable Dr. Peter Caddick-Adams as our guide, our group - representing Shrewsbury School - could take pride in the knowledge that the famous British actor, Richard Todd, who went to school at Shrewsbury and later played Guy Gibson in The Dambusters, had taken part in Operation Deadstick on D-Day, as an officer in the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion. I am pleased to see that belated plans are afoot to make a film about Pegasus Bridge, so that the heroism of the British Paras might at long last receive some of the well earned public acclaim that Saving Private Ryan has brought the American heroes of Omaha Beach.

Later on, laying a wreath at the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Bayeux, in memory of the Salopians who died in the Battle of Normandy, one didn't need to be an historian to appreciate how closely the lives of France and England have been interwoven for centuries. Here, in the first French city to be liberated in 1944, famous for its tapestry about another cross-channel invasion 878 years earlier, it is abundantly clear that Britain's links with continental Europe run far deeper than that creation of post-war politicians, the European Union. It is as absurd for the Remainiacs to claim that Brexit will damage our long links with France and other continental countries as it is for Emma Thompson to berate Great Britain for being 'cake-filled'. One of the great glories of France is that practically every French village boasts at least one good patisserie. France has even more gateaux than it has chateaux, and that should be a cause for celebration. French gateaux and British cakes will continue to give pleasure long after Brexit. Only Emma Thompson could regard that as a cause for dismay.

Brexit was YOUR victory

Rory Broomfield and me at the gates of Downing Street on 24 June 2016

As the old saying, once used by John F. Kennedy, goes, 'victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan'. Inevitably, the stream of accounts of the referendum campaign from those on the victorious Leave side is becoming a flood. Tom Waterhouse, Deputy Head of Ground Campaign for Vote Leave, was quick off the mark, on Conservative Home, writing, 'A bunch of 30-somethings had beaten the Establishment, creating a political shockwave that was felt across the world'.

I don't blame Tom, or anybody else, for letting people know his side of an important story, and I don't doubt that he and his team did a good job. However, in my experience, in any campaign, there is often much good and bad on both the winning and losing sides. Margaret Thatcher won a landslide general victory in 1987, but not before the famous 'wobbly Thursday', when she feared that she might be about to face defeat. Although she won, there is no doubt that Labour had done a good job of trying to make Neil Kinnock appear electable. Any ad man who could make Kinnock appear attractive deserves nothing but praise.

All too often, victory is attributed, after the event, to whoever shouts the loudest. I well recall Saatchi & Saatchi's clever 'Labour isn't working' poster. It was effective, but it was not the main reason for Mrs. Thatcher's historic victory many months later, in May 1979. Naturally, however, as you would expect of any advertising agency worth its salt, Saatchis did not hold back from taking the lion's share of the credit for that historic victory.

It is well known that 'the fog of war' causes confusion in any battle. Politics is no different. Later this month I shall visit the D-Day beaches for the first time since I was a five-year-old. Despite the most meticulous planning, much went wrong on D-Day, not least on Omaha Beach. The brave men who fought in a just cause in Normandy will forever deserve our gratitude, but none of them would claim that everything went to plan. Directly opposite Downing Street, where my colleague, Rory Broomfield and I celebrated Brexit victory (see photograph, above) with a Churchillian v-sign, is a statue of Monty, Field Marshal Montgomery, the commander of all allied ground forces on D-Day. My visit to Normandy will be paying particular tribute to Monty's right hand man, General Sir Miles Dempsey. Most people have never heard of him, even though he commanded all British and Canadian land forces on D-Day. A brilliant and highly regarded soldier, he was also a modest, self-effacing man. He believed that it was the men he commanded that deserved the glory, not their commander. How right he was! He deliberately wrote no memoirs and ordered that, when he died, all of his papers were to be destroyed.

I think that the same was true of Brexit. Of course leading Brexiteers played an important part, but, above all, I think that it is the 17,410,742 (the largest vote for anything in British history) who put a cross in the Leave box, who deserve the credit. Although he was born in a palace, Winston Churchill had the same sure feel for the views of his fellow countrymen as did Margaret Thatcher, born above a corner shop. Churchill was magnanimous and generous enough to appreciate that, despite the epic scale of his own contribution, it was the ordinary British people who had secured victory. His words, spoken from the balcony of the old Ministry of Health building in Whitehall on VE Day, should remind Brexiteers that Brexit was won by the many, not by the few: 'This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the unbending resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.'

Our cake-filled island has a bright future, post-Brexit

The Seven Sisters, viewed from Beachy Head.

The saddest thing about some of the Remainers who fought so hard to prevent Brexit was that they appeared to hate their own country and to take pleasure in running it down. Foremost amongst them was Emma Thompson, who called Britain a 'tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island'.

Of course, many who voted Remain were and are good, patriotic people who did so because they believed it to be in the best interests of their country. I have no quarrel with them, but those who, like Emma Thompson, seem to loathe their own country, do that country great damage.

Recently, looking back at the Seven Sisters as I trudged up to Beachy Head from Birling Gap, I felt fortunate to have been born on Emma Thompson's cake-filled island. Were I a less inept photographer, I should have captured the sight of a Spitfire overhead, flying from the Eastbourne Air Show. It was a reminder that an earlier generation fought and died for this island, and, in doing so, also helped win freedom for people across Europe.

Now, with Brexit on the way, I believe that the United Kingdom has a glorious opportunity to be a world-leading bastion of free trade, free speech and free enterprise. I shall use this blog to chart its progress and to counter the naysayers who long to see Brexit - and Britain - fail.

We now have a Prime Minister who has gone on record as saying that she would be prepared to die for the cause of freedom. With leadership like that, and with the world eager to trade with us, the future for this big, beautiful, cake-filled, joy-laden, green old island has never been brighter.