The Commons

The Incomplete, True, Authentic And Wonderful History Of May Day

Leigh Hunt the English essayist of the 19th century, wrote ‘that May Day is the union of the two best things in the world, the love of nature, and the love of each other’. Peter Linebaugh shows how the festival intertwines two strands of radical thought, the red and the green, with a gentle gambol through the history of labour struggles and agrarian utopianism.

Partition And Prejudice: ‘The English Arrangements Of Place And Space’

Steve Higginson will offer an alternate view of the history of enclosure. In particular he will argue that enclosures cannot be separated from the unitary nature of Englishness and England as an Imperial power. Specific reference will be made to the Empire’s history of partitioning place and space from Ireland to apartheid South Africa.

The Commons Panel Debate: Peter Linebaugh, George Caffentzis, Massimo de Angelis, David Graeber

Join Bristol Radical History group in a public debate with some of the leading critics of neo-liberalism and the current world-wide wave of privatisation and enclosure. What can we learn from the history of enclosure of the commons? Is resistance futile? Where should we be directing our energies, protecting our few remaining open spaces or our state run services like the NHS or schools? As capital expands to its physical limits, how do we build a globalised opposition?

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