Category: Public History

Public History

  • 50 Years On: the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act

    50 Years On: the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act

    Safety poster, c.1979, courtesy British Safety Council, showing a judge pointing his finger at employers.
    Safety poster, c.1979, courtesy British Safety Council.

    Love it or hate it, you can’t escape it: the Health and Safety at Work Act has been an important part of UK working life (and wider) for 50 years.

    To mark its 50th anniversary, a day-long symposium was held in London on 25 November 2024: Health & Safety at Work Act – 50 years on: still fit for purpose?

    It was hosted by the Trade Union & Employment Forum of History & Policy, and brought together practitioners, trades unionists and academics – including the University of Portsmouth History team’s Dr Mike Esbester.  Mike’s research focuses on histories of safety, risk and accident prevention in modern Britain. Some of that has looked at the changing landscape of health and safety at work and beyond since 1960 – including the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. The change of law was much needed; in the 1960s and early 1970s, UK workplaces were still killing and injuring large number of people. Their impacts were felt beyond the factory walls, too, as workplace incidents affected more than ‘just’ employees.

    The principles underlying the Act had both radical and conservative elements. They extended the duty of care far beyond the boundaries of the workplace. At the same time, they modelled older ideas about who was able to prevent harm. Mike brought these tensions and contradictions out in his presentation to the symposium, which gave a long-term historical overview of the Act’s originals.  He’s explored some of these aspects in this piece for The Conversation. This piece, written for History & Policy at the 40th anniversary of the Act, is also still relevant today. All of this work draws upon Mike’s research, including the ‘Changing Legitimacy of Health and Safety at Work’ project, funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety & Health.

    The symposium brought together different approaches, from the historical to the present day, the philosophical to the practical. It wrestled with the question of how far the 1974 Act has kept pace with the world around it, and whether or not it might be time for a new means of approaching health and safety in the UK.

     

  • Collaboration in the Archive

    The University of Portsmouth History team’s Mike Esbester has recently had a co-authored open access article published, in Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal. It’s part of a special issue, marking the 50th anniversary of the Modern Records Centre (MRC) at the University of Warwick.

    The MRC is the major repository for archives of trades unions and employers organisations, with a particular strength in transport collections. Mike has been using the MRC for his research for over 20 years.

    Over the last five years the MRC has been an integral part of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, as a collaborator and institutional co-lead, alongside the University of Portsmouth and the National Railway Museum. The project also works with The National Archives of the UK and the RMT Union. The project is looking at accidents to British and Irish railway workers before the Second World War.

    Working with small teams of dedicated volunteers, the project is transcribing accident records and making them freely available for researchers to use, via the project website. So far the project has made available over 48,000 records, and the volunteers are working on a further 70,000 cases.

    Page from a booklet, with text describing an accident, accompanied by a posed photograph, showing a fireman on top of a steam engine's tender as it was moving, about to be struck by a bridge.
    Page from a booklet, with text describing an accident, accompanied by a posed photograph, showing a fireman on top of a steam engine’s tender as it was moving, about to be struck by a bridge.

    Given collaboration is integral to the Railway Work, Life & Death project, when the MRC wanted to mark its 50th anniversary in 2023, Mike and the project team were keen to be involved. Mike spoke about the project, alongside volunteer Cheryl Hunnisett and RMT President Alex Gordon. Having voices outside the traditional higher education setting was fundamental to the talk, another way of putting into practice the co-creative ethos of the project.

    This has followed into the publication, ‘Collaboration in the Archive’. It looks at the Railway Work, Life & Death project and the MRC, reflecting on the project’s work, including the successes and challenges of working collaboratively. As a point of principle, it was co-authored. It features two of the project volunteers, Cheryl Hunnisett and Stephen Lamb, the MRC’s Senior Archivist James King, RMT President Alex Gordon, and Mike.

    Just as importantly, in terms of reaching outside higher education, the article is open access, meaning it’s free to download!

  • Discovering a railway-worker ancestor

    Discovering a railway-worker ancestor

    Our own Dr Mike Esbester was featured on BBC 1’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ on 5 September 2024, helping Rose Ayling-Ellis learn more about her ancestor’s railway accident.  The episode is available to watch on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022n0p

  • A virtual tour of the British Museum

    A virtual tour of the British Museum

    On 9 May 2024 some of our UoP history third-year students did a virtual reality tour of the British Museum as part of their option, ‘Collecting the World: From Cabinets of Curiosity to the British Museum’ taught by Dr Alexandra Ortolja-Baird. Thanks to, @cci_digital_studios, for hosting the session.

  • Tombfinders: Working with the Napoleonic past

    Tombfinders: Working with the Napoleonic past

    As part of the Working with the Past Module, four second year undergraduates from the University of Portsmouth’s BA History program (Izzy Turtle, Emily Harris, Damiana Kun and Rebekah Money) have been working with the Napoleonic & Revolutionary War Graves Charity (NRWGC) on a dedicated project to locate Napoleonic era veterans, locating and assessing their graves, and working to restore them. Founded in 2021, the NRWGC (UK Registered Charity No 1196849) was founded by Zach White to honour the memory of veterans of all nationalities who served between 1775 and 1815. The charity does this by locating veteran’s long forgotten graves, cleaning and restoring them where appropriate, and reburying disinterred veterans so that they can have the dignity of a final resting place.

    Highland Road Cemetery, Portsmouth
    Highland Road Cemetery, Portsmouth

    In this podcast launched on Sunday 5 May 2024, project members talk about their recent efforts to find the graves of Napoleonic veterans across Portsmouth, and their experiences of cleaning graves. The students travelled to the Hampshire County Archive in Winchester, before narrowing down their search to Highland Road Cemetery, spending hours tracking down and assessing graves in the cemetery, and the rolling their sleeves up and cleaning one of the graves – that of Major General Dwyer, of the Royal Marines Light Infantry. Their research also saw them request and receive access to St Ann’s Church, on the Portsmouth Dockyard Naval Base, as they went searching for a little-known memorial to Admiral Maitland – the man who arrested Napoleon.

    To find out more about the efforts of the NRWGC, and the support their work, go to www.nrwgc.com

  • The Dragon Gun: secrets of a local South-East Asian treasure

    The Dragon Gun: secrets of a local South-East Asian treasure

    On 29 November 2023 we were pleased to welcome Thomas Davies, Assistant Curator of Artillery at the Royal Armouries: Fort Nelson, to the University of Portsmouth as part of our History Research Group Seminar series. Thomas presented his paper on the Dragon Gun, the iconic cannon housed at Royal Armouries: Fort Nelson on Portsdown Hill.  The Dragon Gun was captured in Myanmar by the British Army in the 19th century and presented to the Prince of Wales. Today it can be viewed in Fort Nelson’s Art of Artillery gallery. The gun dates to the 18th century, is only one of four in the world, and has always been believed to be Burmese in origin. However, new research reveals that the gun may not be from Myanmar after all. Thomas’ talk discussed the theories regarding its symbolism, manufacture, and its potential uses in warfare. He also discussed the gun’s capture, as well as his efforts to trace the gun’s true origins in Southeast Asia.
    If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password  M^Kzbc8e to access the recording.
    The Dragon Gun is just one of over 700 items, which have been collected over a 600 year period, that the museum houses. You can find out more information about the museum here.