Risk, Responsibility and Robens: The Transformation of the British System of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, 1961–1974

Over the last twenty years, three short words have come to dominate many discussions about the control of risks: ‘health and safety’. In colloquial use, the term embodies a multitude of concerns about the impact of everyday actions on the bodies and minds of individuals; it also commonly conflates what are often separate areas of statutory regulation, particularly road safety, food safety and environmental regulations. Together with two other words often uttered in the same sentence, ‘gone mad’, ‘health and safety’ is often used as a kind of shorthand for bureaucracy, and the whole gamut of rules and regulations that have evolved in response to the risks of everyday life.