Death by Consensus: The Westray Story

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1993

Source Publication

New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. Volume 3, Number 4 (1993), p. 14-41.

Keywords

political context of Westray mine disaster; political economy and Westray Mine; Westray mine; Westray mine disaster

Abstract

The paper will proceed as follows. It tells the Westray story in two parts, first, the decision to set up the mine and, second, the operation of the mine. These events illuminate the salience of the broader political economic context to an understanding of what happened. Further, the story gives the lie to the assumptions which underpin health and safety regulation. Next, the paper details the implications of the political economy and the prevailing ideology for the enforcement of health and safety regulation. The paper then critically examines a component of, or prop for, the consensus theory which postulates that workers and capitalists share, in some roughly comparable way, the risks of production. In part this is done by examining the proposition that the corporate form is a neutral, facilitating device.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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