Knowing I was not alone helped me find my voice and then to raise it
– Health and safety campaigner Louise Adamson
Louise Adamson’s brother, Michael, a young electrician, was electrocuted at work in 2005 and since then she has been campaigning for safer workplaces and tougher penalties for firms failing to properly protect staff. In this extract from Don’t Run, the trustee with the Scottish Hazards charity explains why.
In court, only Michael’s company, this “invisible man,” was found guilty over his death and fined £300,000. It did not feel like justice, it felt like the opposite. A year later, I found out about Families Against Corporate Killing, a campaigning and support organisation for those with loved ones killed by work.
Hilda Palmer from the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre, along with a number of other families she had been supporting, were the core group. I had very
tentatively fired off an email and was invited down for a meeting.
On the way down on the train, I was reading a book entitled How To Win Campaigns, intent on being full of great new ideas when I arrived in Manchester. I didn’t have a clue about the work Hilda had done over decades but soon discovered that what she didn’t know about campaigning wasn’t worth knowing. I will be forever in their debt, because finding them has ensured positives have come from the awfulness of Michael’s death.
The group was initially set up to lobby against the Corporate Manslaughter And Corporate Homicide Act, as weak and toothless as we feared. There has been not a single successful prosecution in Scotland. We lobbied MSPS and MPS, we talked to trade unions and pressure groups, we presented at the Centre for Corporate Accountability and held demonstrations. Though we were ultimately unsuccessful in getting the legislation changed, we have not relented in, as Hilda puts it, “speaking truth to power”.
The Scottish Hazards Centre launched in 2015 and I go to organisations and spell out the failings that led to my brother’s death and the impact on his friends and family, making health and safety a much more real thing.
Progress is made by collective effort. That is how you bring about change. Knowing that I wasn’t howling solo into the wind is what helped me to find my voice and realise that I can be a voice for others. This brings a huge amount of comfort to me.
It’s about making positive change for other people but people must know they are not necessarily going to change the world overnight. Don’t have unrealistic expectations. But don’t let the pace of things get you down.
You need to keep at it and eventually you are going to turn enough people the right way – your way!