Handle with Care (British Coal Video)
Calling all miners: watch this film and stay safe.
Step inside the gates of a 1986 colliery and join the colliers watching this deadpan video instructional on the dos-and-don'ts of handling cement and alkaline materials. Now in widespread use by the National Coal Board for sealant purposes, these were potentially dangerous.
As well as its insights into the subject, this video offers an interesting contrast with the numerous coalmining safety films of the 1960s and 70s, made by the NCB Film Unit with cinematic style and dark humour. The Film Unit having closed during the 1984-5 miners strike, all equivalent work afterwards was taken up by NCB-TV, making tape productions like this one, destined for canteen TV monitors and with no time or money for such aesthetics. Whether it was such low-key, informative videos or their vigorous film predecessors that were more effective in preventing injury is at this distance hard to say.
The safe handling of cement products underground.
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Health & Safety at Work
Work can be a matter of life and death. Explore how video helped spread the gospel of ‘Elf’n’Safety’ and improved Britain’s workplaces
As employers and government grew gradually but increasingly conscious of responsibilities towards the wellbeing of staff at work, so grew the role of film in the workplace. The moving image, with its emotional power and its ability to stick in the memory (especially when resorting to graphic imagery), was well placed to help get key health and safety messaging across both to employees, exhorted to follow safe practices, and to employers and managers encouraged to make conditions as safe as possible (or at least, as safe as the law requires of them).
And when things go wrong, the filmmaker may be there to help pick up the pieces, documenting or dramatising the consequences. In the era of videotape cameras and videotape viewing, late in the 20th century, the role of film in ‘Elf’n’Safety’ only grew bigger. This collection explores how it did it
16 videos in this collection
1
2
Disability Discrimination Act: Act Now
3
Handle with Care
4
First Aid in the Laboratory: Chemical Spillages
5
Make Health Your Business
6
Health and Safety at Work for Enfield
7
Safety's No Accident
8
Illegal Manriding
9
The Self Rescuer
10
Contraband Kills
11
Fighting the Odds
12
Fire Service Demonstrate House Fire
13
Pointers To Good Safety Management: Caring Occupations
14
Pointers To Good Safety Management: Equestrian Work
15
Pointers To Good Safety Management: In a Garage
16