History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | trades’ unions

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

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 […]

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Accidental dismemberment on the railways

Our own Dr Mike Esbester is co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project at the National Railway Museum.  This post from the project, written by co-lead Karen Baker, looks at the work of one of the project’s placement students, Connor Scott, who used the dataset to interrogate just how dangerous it was to work on the railways, with 23,000 accidents investigated by state inspectors between 1900 and 1939, including 504 deaths. The data show that shunting accidents were particularly common, and the blog details how this has led to new displays at the museum to illustrate this for visitors. Another display shows a prosthetic leg made by the […]

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