It’s easy to forget how risky a Saturday afternoon at the fair used to be. Beyond the sound of the waltzer and the smell of frying onions, you can see something that the parents of the late 1970s could not quite trust when you stroll through the Newcastle Hoppings today: mostly functional rides, mostly secure harnesses, and inspectors who show up. That didn’t come by accident. It came about as a result of a brief, straightforward pamphlet published by the Home Office in 1976 and the protracted bureaucratic dispute that ensued.
No one read The Guide to Safety at Fairs for enjoyment. It followed a series of mishaps in the early 1970s that the media, both then and now, dismissed as singular misfortunes. They weren’t, the Guide insisted.
| Reference Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Document Title | Guide to Safety at Fairs (1976) |
| Issuing Body | UK Home Office |
| Year of Publication | 1976 |
| Successor Publication | HSG175 — Fairgrounds and Amusement Parks: Guidance on Safe Practice (Third Edition, November 2017) |
| Governing Legislation | Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 |
| Co-Author of Current Edition | Fairgrounds Joint Advisory Committee |
| Notable Incident Influencing Reform | Concorde Flyer accident, Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, 26 December 1978 |
| Industry Body | Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain |
| Recorded Casualties (1977–1985) | 25 deaths, 158 major accidents, 283 minor injuries |
| Current Standard Reference | ISBN 9780717666638 |
It established, for the first time in any organized manner, that fairground equipment had to be designed, constructed, supplied, operated, and maintained in accordance with a set standard, and that when it wasn’t, someone, somewhere, was responsible. The language seems almost charming when you read it now. It must have felt intrusive when you read it in 1977.
Nevertheless, the mishaps continued to occur. On Boxing Day in 1978, two passengers were killed when the Concorde Flyer’s arm sheared off due to metal fatigue at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall. Sheriff Irvine Smith oversaw the official investigation, which found that the failure was caused by a series of minor errors that were not fatal on their own. This is, to be fair, how most tragedies occur. No criminal charges were brought. The civil claims seem to have been quietly resolved. However, from 1976 to the HSG175 guidelines that are still in effect today, the engineering lessons directly influenced how rides are currently inspected.
Looking back, it’s remarkable how resistant the industry was to regulation and how much of the change originated within it. Despite being stereotyped as defensive, the Showmen’s Guild actually adopted a self-policing role during the 1980s. In 1985, Mr. Whiteleg, the national president of the Guild, took the local MP on a tour of the Hoppings site and showed him the log books that operators had started maintaining in accordance with a voluntary code.
Reading the old Hansard debates gives the impression that most showmen sincerely didn’t want anyone harmed by their machines. The issue was the tiny minority that concealed defective equipment from inspectors and got away with it; Rodney Harrison famously referred to it as a “five to seven percent rotten core.”
The 1976 framework is still relevant because of this. The logic of duty-holders, the requirement for documented inspection, and the notion that risk must be evaluated prior to ride opening rather than after a patient is admitted to the hospital are all carried over into the third edition of HSG175, which was released in 2017.
The term “maturity risk assessments,” which was unheard of fifty years ago, is now commonplace. Inspection agencies have become more professional. Major injuries on UK fairground rides are less common per ride-hour than they have ever been, according to data from the Health and Safety Executive, which is frequently criticized.
However, it is difficult to ignore how easily all of this could be reversed. Regulation is not glamorous. Budgets are reduced. Eventually, someone will claim that the industry can be relied upon to take care of itself and that the regulations are outdated. History contradicts this. A half-century ago, someone in Whitehall sat down and wrote a guide that no one requested, which is why a child can now climb off the dodgems with nothing worse than a bumped forehead.
