Studio 2: Bristol Radical History Group highlights

A series of  10 minute ‘taster talks’ covering recently or soon to be published Bristol Radical History Group texts. These include:

Lady Blackshirts: The Perils of Perception – suffragettes who became fascists [Rosemary Caldicott]

During the 1930’s a small group of ultra-nationalistic women, who considered themselves feminists, joined Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Surprisingly some of these women were former high ranking members of the suffragette movement.

The Smoke-Dragon and How to Destroy it by Edward Carpenter [Stephen E Hunt]

Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was one of the most progressive thinkers and writers and activists of the late-19th, early 20th centuries. He was an early supporter of the Bristol Socialist Society and paid regular visits to the city. Now remembered and celebrated mostly for his support for libertarian socialism and gay politics, he also took up ‘green’ causes. Carpenter’s campaigns for smoke abatement have rarely been revisited. His serialised essay on the subject, ‘The Smoke-Dragon and How to Destroy it’, which first appeared in The Clarion in 1894, has never been republished until now.

Turbulence: labour and gender relations in Bristol’s aircraft industry during the First World War [Mike Richardson]

The tensions faced by the men and women in Bristol’s aircraft industry during the First World War add to our knowledge of the turbulence of wartime industrial relations. Workers resisted State regulation, the incorporation of the trade union and labour leadership into the State machinery, the prohibition of strikes and lockouts, compulsory arbitration and dilution.

Wulfstan to Colston: Severing the Sinews of Slavery, Bristol’s 1000 Year Battle [Mark Steeds and Roger Ball]

Recent research by BRHG historians has shown that ‘city father’ Edward Colston was a major player in the trans-Atlantic slave trade as deputy-governor of the Royal African Company and later as an investor in the South Sea Company. This new book exposes the links between Bristol’s mercantile elite and slavery over many centuries as well as a vibrant opposition to the vile trade.