Interview
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On December 27, 1974, 42 men were killed by an explosion in the town of Pas-de-Calais. In an interview with “Libération”, historian Marion Fontaine analyzes the impact of this event which had a lasting impact on the world of work.
At dawn on December 27, 1974, just fifty years ago, an explosion at the bottom of the Saint-Amé pit in Liévin, in Pas-de-Calais, caused the death of 42 miners, aged between 25 and 54 years old. One of the worst mining accidents in France since the Courrières disaster in 1906 (1,099 deaths). This Friday, December 27, the official commemorations of the anniversary of this event which lastingly traumatized the region will take place. And which testifies to profound transformations at work in the 1970s in the relationship of the world of work to accidents and safety, explains historian Marion Fontaine, professor at Sciences-Po, specialist in workers’ history and author of the work End of a working world – Liévin, 1974published in 2014.
Is the Liévin disaster a moment of collective awareness regarding safety at work?
The Liévin disaster is the reflection of a movement which began a few years earlier and can be summed up by a formula widely used at the time of the accident: the refusal of fate. It is the refusal of the idea that it would be normal or inevitable for men to die in the mines. In 1906, after the Courrières disaster, Jean Jaurès explained
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