He questioned whether education to encourage sensible drinking in Britain had much impact - it was outweighed by the pro-alcohol culture.There was no case for banning alcohol because, taken in moderation, it was known significantly to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in people over 50.. Gaynor Madgwick (above) has taken 30 years to come to terms with surviving the Aberfan disaster. However, she hopes that the launch yesterday of her book, Struggling Out Of the Darkness (published by Valley and Vale), will help to exorcise the memory of the day in October 1966 when her school was buried by coal waste, killing 144, including her brother and sister. Dr Peter Anderson, a scientist with the World Wide Fund for Nature, the keynote speaker in the debate on "Alcohol: Friend or Foe", said it was a dependence producing drug which did harm to others as well asfrom those who used it - in the form of assaults, road injuries, and health service costs. Warning messages about health dangers have to be placed on advertising posters.Mr Rutherford said there were fewer problems involving drunkenness among young people in France than in Britain, due to a combination of government action and different social attitudes. "But our government sends out no such clear message."By allowing pub opening hours to be extended, and declaring last December that the safe drinking limit should be raised from 21 to 28 units a week for men (14 to 21 units for women), the Government was guilty at least of ambivalence.France allows no alcohol advertisements on television, and alcoholic drinks are banned from programmes aimed at children. At the same time the trend in Britain has been static or rising. But, as Guinness PLC's director of strategic affairs, Peter Mitchell, pointed out, the French still drink about a third more than Britain, they tax their alcohol far less, there are more alcohol-related road deaths and injuries, and more illness."The clear message from the French, for years and years, is that less is better," said Derek Rutherford, a former director of the National Council on Alcoholism, and a magistrate.

France has steadily reduced its consumption over the past quarter century and the campaigners claim that this is because its government and politicians have long sought to do so and sent clear messages to the drinking public. A few miles up the valley a factory is being built by a Korean manufacturer of earth moving equipment.Change may be in the air but the old verities of community and mutual help which inform Struggling Out Of The Darkness are fighting back.. Campaigners against alcohol abuse cited France, Europe's heaviest drinking nation, as a splendid example to the British during a debate at the festival of science in Birmingham yesterday. It takes a long, long time to get the fears and frustrations out of the system. Writing the book was my way of healing" she said.She regularly visits the hillside cemetery where rows of arched marble headstones stand sentinel over the village, a stark reminder of the price paid for keeping a nation warm and the wheels of industry turning.Merthyr Vale colliery, the pit around which Aberfan was built, closed six years ago with the loss of 400 jobs.

The village is bypassed well out of sight of motorists speeding to the honeypot that is Cardiff. After months spent in hospital after the disaster and attempts to block out memories of the disaster Ms Madgwick began to write in her early teens The manuscript languished for nearly 20 years. Then five years ago she steeled herself to complete the task.The divorced mother of three children - James 17, Ben 15 and Cassandra nine - Gaynor, slim and fair-haired, typifies the resilience of a community still scarred by the events of 30 years ago."I hope the book will help other survivors, like the people of Dunblane. I was too dazed to scream or do anything." Her grandfather was among the rescuers who eventually found her.Her brother Carl, aged seven, and sister Marilyn, 10, died - as did another 114 children and 28 adults.It has been a long march back. But yesterday the community centre at Aberfan, a typical valleys' village five miles from Merthyr Tydfil, was packed for the launch of her book Struggling Out Of The Darkness and plans for ceremonies to mark the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, which falls on 21 October, were discussed.The book is, in the truest sense, a story of courage. It was a scene from Dante's Inferno as hundreds of rescuers clawed away at the detritus of a century's mining.