FT270


The myth

The traditional game of conkers has been banned from British schools for “health and safety” reasons.


The “truth”

In October 2004, the head of Cummers­dale Primary School, Carlisle, made a schoolboy error: he imagined that journalists were capable of understanding satire. Fed up with filling in what he considered to be excessive forms when taking children on school trips, Shaun Halfpenny decided to stage a protest against the Health and Safety Executive’s obsess­ion, as he saw it, with red tape. He arranged for a group of his pupils to play conkers while wearing safety goggles, and invited the local press along to watch. Inevitably, by the time the story had reached the national media, the joke was being reported as fact – and has been ever since. In time, the myth evolved from the relatively subtle “goggles” original into the simpler variant of a total ban on conkers. Indeed, as late as 2009, the then Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, was using the conkers ban as evidence of “health and safety gone mad”. The HSE itself described the risk from playing conkers as “not worth bothering about”, while in a brave but doomed attempt to counter the untruths, the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has sponsored the World Conker Championships.


Sources

Independent, 16 Dec 2009
Mail Online, 26 Sep 2008
IOSH news release, 9 Dec 2009


Disclaimer

All discussion of matters such as this is complicated by ostension: it may well be that some schools have since banned conkers in response to false press reports. But can anyone find an instance that predates Mr Halfpenny’s escapade?