The commission appointed to inquire into this Welsh disaster was exclusively English and even more narrowly north-eastern English, consisting of two Yorkshiremen and a Durham-born man who had spent a lifetime in Yorkshire.

The Commissioner was the Chief Inspector of Mines, Sir Henry Walker CBE LLD. Born in 1873 at Saltburn on Sea, he had joined the Inspectorate after studying mining at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was appointed to the office of Chief Inspector in 1924, the year in which he investigated the accident at Llay Main Colliery, and received his knighthood in 1928.

It was not axiomatic that he should conduct the inquiry and there was some pressure for the appointment of an independent chairman. When the matter was raised in the House shortly after the inquiry had begun the Secretary for Mines replied to a private notice question with an assurance that the constitution of the court had been settled in consultation with, and in accordance with the wishes of, the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. The questioner may have feared that the Commissioner and the department he represented might be prejudiced against the miners, and as time went by the suspicion hardened into a certainty on the miners' side that they were; but for the moment they had to be content with a further assurance from the Minister that the Federation was at liberty to bring forward as witnesses any workmen whose evidence it thought likely to advance the cause of the inquiry.