WORKING & DYING ON THE RAILWAYS, 100 YEARS AGO

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: november/december 2017 :: RMTnews 20 One death or injury on the railways is one too many – that much was as true in 1911 as it is today, though sadly in 1911 it didn’t prevent 446 railway workers from dying on the job and nearly 27,900 from being injured. The ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project is exploring accidents to railway workers between 1911 and 1915, taken from the state accident investigations undertaken at the time. We’re using the reports of the investigations to find out more about what it was like to work on Britain’s railways in the run-up to the First World War and how so many people died or were injured. We also want to humanise the harsh statistics: every one of the 28,294 casualties in 1911 had a name, a family, friends and colleagues. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the real impact of accidents when confronted with the vast numbers of casualties at this time. And it’s important for us to think about – and challenge – the ideas of responsibility which were held at the time. All too often these found that worker ‘carelessness’ (the term used at the time) was to blame, whereas now we’d see the issues as relating to the pressure of work, economies in work and dangers that were WORKING & DYING ON THE RAILWAYS, 100 YEARS AGO Historian Mike Esbester introduces a new project which shows the perils of railway work around the time of the First World War – and makes us think about what’s changed today