Category Archives: News

Reflecting on the 1974 Health & Safety at Work Act

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This month’s issue of the British Safety Council’s journal Safety Management includes a series of reflections on the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act, which has its 40th birthday this month. One of the pieces is written by Mike Esbester, and puts the Act into a long perspective, flagging up some continuities and changes in how we have thought about and approached issues of health and safety at work over the last 150 years or so, and identifying some challenges and opportunities for the future.

 

Read more at: https://sm.britsafe.org/hswa-40-act-changed-our-working-lives

 

Expect to read more about the 1974 Act here in the coming weeks – do check back!

Forthcoming presentations

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Mike Esbester has been invited to discuss project research at a specially convened symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. The symposium is taking place at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on 8 July, and includes contributions from current and former Health and Safety Executive officials and academics. It aims to think about how the 1974 Act came about, what impact it has had, and how the challenges of occupational health and safety have changed over the last 40 years.

 

Mike’s paper, ‘Buying in to health and safety? Perceptions of legitimacy of occupational health and safety & the 1974 Act’, will draw on project research and is a first outing for some thoughts arising from the project to date – and, no doubt, it will be a chance to get some useful feedback.

 

Further details about the symposium and booking (before 27 June) at: http://history.lshtm.ac.uk/2014/05/09/the-health-and-safety-at-work-act-1974-historical-and-contemporary-perspectives/

 

 

Mike will be in action again a few days later, presenting a paper at the Society for the Social History of Medicine’s conference on the theme of ‘Disease, Health and the State.’ The conference takes place in Oxford between 10-12 July, and Mike’s paper, ‘Il/legitimate risks? The state and Occupational Health and Safety in post-1960 Britain’, will consider how the state has dealt with OSH issues since 1960, particularly in relation to questions about legitimacy.

Focus groups

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The contemporary public attitudes component of the project, co-ordinated by the University of Reading, is now well underway, with Paul Almond and Carmen D’Cruz having run focus groups across the country over the past month.  The last of the eight focus groups (each lasting ninety minutes and with roughly eight participants) was carried out just over a week ago week in Bath, with the others being held in Leeds, Manchester, London, Reading, Windsor, Southampton, and Bristol.

We largely focused on the following:

  • Media coverage about occupational health and safety (OHS), looking into participants’ awareness of and reaction to ‘regulatory myths’ and ‘health and safety gone mad’ cases;
  • Personal experiences, examining participants’ knowledge of and opinions about the legal/regulatory framework of OHS, their experiences of OHS in the workplace and elsewhere, and their perceptions of change in this area over time;
  • Trust and values, assessing how far participants support/ identify with the concept of health and safety regulation and the values underpinning it, as well as the factors influencing this support; and
  • Key concerns, asking about participants’ reservations and concerns regarding this area of the law (e.g. independence, public interest) and the things they would like changed.

Each focus group shed new light on key issues and we gathered crucial information about the motivations, processes, and understandings that inform and shape public attitudes, as well as their substantive form and direction. Following transcription, we are excited to begin an in-depth analysis of our findings. Stay tuned for more!

Is health and safety used as a ‘smokescreen’?

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Health and safety came to the fore in the media yet again this week, with minister Mike Penning claiming: ‘Health and safety has long been used as a smokescreen by jobsworths who have little knowledge of the law and who want to fob people off with an easy excuse’. You can read more at:          http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27084474

Paul Almond appeared on the Today Programme on Radio 4, BBC Radio 2, 5Live, and BBC Radio Berkshire to discuss issues around health and safety myths and health and safety as a smokescreen.  Paul welcomed  Mr. Penning’s recognition of various media stories as myths rather than matters of law and agreed that ‘health and safety’ is often seized upon as an excuse. You can listen to the full discussion on BBC Radio Berkshire here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01x1lg1 (from 16 minutes in).

Archive research update

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The historical part of the project (based at the University of Portsmouth) is now well underway, and over the past three weeks Mike Esbester and Laura Mayne have been visiting archives and collecting information on relevant collections across the UK.

In particular we’re looking for sources which will show how social, political and economic factors have influenced perceptions of the legitimacy of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) in Britain since 1960. In essence, have attitudes changed? If they have, how and why? And how do we go about investigating this?

One of the main points of interest for the project will be the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. Collections held at Warwick include the records of the Trade Union Congress, papers of many trade unions (Including, for example, the Transport and General Workers Union) as well as records of labour organisations and employment welfare bodies like the Industrial Welfare Society.

The National Archives also hold a wealth of relevant information like the records of the Health and Safety Executive (1969-2006) and the papers of the Factory Inspectorate. We’re also particularly interested in practitioner organisations concerned with OHS in Britain, and the archives of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents promise a number of exciting sources.

Media sources are invaluable for examining popular opinion and discourses about health and safety and how this changes over time. The British Library Newspaper Archive will be useful for discussion of OHS in the media, whilst a number of press archives have been digitised, such as the Times Digital Archive and UK Press Online.

A number of TV, film and radio archives are also available online, and so far Laura’s been involved in identifying these and in sourcing programmes discussing OHS (such as current affairs programmes like Panorama). Other moving image/audiovisual archives like British Pathe Newsreels will also be useful, and material is being sourced from the British Film Institute.

Hopefully this brief post provides an idea of how the Portsmouth-based aspect of the project is developing, and we’ll aim to keep the blog updated with more information as research continues and we get further into the archival research.

New appointments and progress

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We are delighted to announce that two Research Assistants have been apointed to work on the project with us – Carmen D’Cruz, who will be based at the University of Reading School of Law, and Laura Mayne, who will be based at the University of Portsmouth School of of Social, Historical and Literary Studies. They will be working during 2014 to bring the project to fruition, engaging with archival, empirical, and documentary sources to gain new insights into change over time.

As such, we will be looking for relevant archival sites and sources that really speak to the realities of health and safety regulation, policy, and change since 1960, and will also be looking to interview key players from the worlds of policy, industry, regulation, and the trade unions. If you have ideas about sources, or things that we should definitely be looking for, then please do get in touch or drop us a comment via this blog site! Thank you!

Paul and Mike

Now recruiting!

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We are currently looking to recruit another Research Assistant to work on this IOSH (Institution of Occupational Safety and Health)-funded research project investigating the public legitimacy of health and safety regulation since 1960. This is a one-year, full-time post (commencing January 2014) involving researching a range of primary and secondary sources relating to occupational safety and health in post-1960 Britain, with a focus on changing notions of legitimacy, particularly in relation to the role of the state. This should be a really interesting and exciting project to be involved with, so if this appeals to you, please do get in touch!

The post will be based in the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies at the University of Portsmouth, working alongside Dr Mike Esbester and Professor Paul Almond of the University of Reading.Further details are available at http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHQ939/research-assistant-in-history/ and at https://port.engageats.co.uk/Login.aspx?enc=8mQu39IePHh228vAX7gMRoLmnqS1YDZYtHafv1sn46I=

Now recruiting!

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We are currently looking to recruit a talented Research Assistant to work on this IOSH (Institution of Occupational Safety and Health)-funded research project investigating the public legitimacy of health and safety regulation since 1960. This is a one-year, full-time post (commencing January 2014) involving gathering empirical data, managing the research process, and collaborating on the production of research outputs.this should be a really interesting and exciting project to be invovled with, so if this appeals to you, please do get in touch!

The post will be based in the School of Law at the University of Reading, working alongside Professor Paul Almond and Dr Mike Esbester of the University of Portsmouth. For more details, please visit http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHN287/research-assistant/

Applications via http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/jobs/

Closing date 25/11/2013