| Summary: | This thesis examines the nature of the current legal regulation of occupational safety and health in Britain, and aims to understand the limitations of such regulation. This aim also leads us to consider the potential for, and the means of securing, improvements in safety and health performance in the UK chemical industry. Having set the research in context and addressed some pertinent methodological issues, the thesis begins by providing an overview of existing safety and health legislation, both in relation to manufacturing industry in general, and then in relation to the chemical industry more specifically. Here we establish the nature and significance of the self-regulatory system which was formalised in law by the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. We then commence our assessment of the impact and efficacy of this system, considering the 'progress' of self-regulation through the 1970s and 1980s. We argue here that this system of selfregulation has proven an ineffective guarantor of safety and health at work. Our focus then shifts much more specifically onto the UK chemical industry. Having arrived at an understanding of key accidentgenerating factors in the UK chemical industry, we consider efforts within that industry to prevent these through selfregulatory efforts. This latter consideration is conducted at both theoretical and empirical levels. We conclude that while the chemical industry is in a relatively favourable position to self-regulate effectively, this is not being achieved. Thus we are led to further consider the role of external regulation. We conclude by arguing for the possibilities of more punitive and interventionist forms of legal regulation of safety and health at work, and we rather speculatively sketch out elements of these. Here, we once again encounter the limitations of the legal regulation of business in a capitalist social order
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