Blackburn event – 12.30pm by the memorial tree, Sudell Cross end of Northgate
The international “theme” for Workers Memorial Day in 2026 is “ensuring a healthy psychosocial working environment”.
The psychosocial working environment is defined by how work is designed, organized and managed, and the organizational practices that shape everyday working conditions. Psychosocial factors – such as workload and working time, role clarity, autonomy, support, and fair and transparent processes – strongly influence how work is experienced and affect workers’ safety, health and performance.
This is an important aspect of Health and Safety at work to highlight.
At our annual memorial event in Blackburn, however, we also want to mark that it is the 50th anniversary of the progenitor of the current “Hazards” magazine – the “Hazards Bulletin” – which was set up in 1976 – in response to the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 – by Charlie Clutterbuck, Alan Dalton and Tony Fletcher – all members of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science.
The three had been involved in the production of the BSSRS magazine Science for People, which “provided brief coverage of topical science matters from a radical standpoint as well as reporting on the work of BSSRS”, and increasingly found themselves addressing organised labour events on the subject of industrial hazards.
Charlie remembers: “We had to type up script on a clunky typewriter, take the script to a typesetter to put in decent alignment, collect a few days later, cut up and paste on to card to go to printers, then collect the great bundle of 1000 hardcopies, and either physically deliver copies or put them in the post. Yet it worked!”.
This was an incredible period for embedding the idea of Health and Safety in British workplaces, with the TUC rapidly, with Government support, rolling out a new cadre of Trade Union Education tutors. Blackburn College was one of the pioneering sites, where Charlie himself came to work.
We are pleased that Charlie has agreed to be our keynote speaker at this year’s Blackburn commemoration. Please make a note of the date and do see if you can manage to make time to come along.