Poet and letterpress artist Dennis Gould began the early 1960s in Stafford Prison. Serving with the Royal Engineers during the 1950s, he later took up the cause of the Committee of 100, the direct-action wing of the anti-nuclear movement, carrying out acts of non-violent civil disobedience for which he was detained at her Majesty’s pleasure. In 1965 Dennis helped to organise an anarchist fringe festival of poetry at the Octagon in Bath. He continued to campaign and work with Peace News and then […]
In August 1917 a meeting of Forest of Dean Miners passed motions against the conscription of miners and in favour of an immediate negotiated peace to end the war. This talk will discuss the role agitators and conscientious objectors played in this process and what happened next. Ian Wright recently authored Ring Out the Thousand Wars of Old: The Forest of Dean World War One Conscientious Objectors.
These videos are of talks that were presented at the Bristol Radical History Festival 2017. Black lives and white mans war Silu Pascoe. Three British Anarchists in America Sheila Rowbotham. Mutiny in world war 1 Julian Putkowski. John Maclean and The War After The War Jim Slaven. Refusing to fight in World War 1 Lois Bibbings and Cyril Pearce. Bristol Women against world war one June Hannam and Bernadette Hyland.
This talk examines the lives of three British migrants who became Individualist anarchists and part of the network around the journal Liberty. The Bristolian activist and poet, Miriam Daniell was a defiant free spirit who clashed fiercely with the basket maker and writer, William Bailie. Bailie later lived in a free union with her close friend from Bristol, Helena Born and wrote the first biography of America’s original anarchist, Josiah Warren. Bailie and Born’s friend, Archibald Simpson, a […]
Not A BRHG Event
Dorset’s first Radical Bookfair will take place on Saturday 3rd June 2017 at Portfield Community Hall, Portfield Rd, Christchurch BH23 2AQ (approximately 5 minutes walk from Christchurch railway station). Ground floor is accessible for the disabled. Free entry to the public from 10:30 to 17:30 with after party from 19:30 to 23:00 £5 suggested donation. BRHG will be giving the following talk at the event: 'Ye have not done as ye ought': The Captain Swing Uprising The ‘Swing riots’ were a massive […]
The US city of Detroit had a population in the region of 1.8 million in the 1950s but automation and the flight of big business, particularly in the automotive industry, led to massive redundancies, foreclosures and the displacement of millions. The population now stands at less than 700,000, the lowest it has been for a century. In the midst of this neo-liberal catastrophe and the associated withdrawal of public services, residents have banded together to create their own solutions including […]
A new play by Townsend Productions (the people who brought you United We Stand, a play about the Shrewsbury pickets) speedway, the wall of death and the Spanish Civil War - DARE DEVIL RIDES TO JARAMA. To you we speak, you numberless Englishmen, To remind you of the greatness still among you Created by these men who go from your towns To fight for peace, for liberty and for you. Clem Beckett and Christopher Caudwell were such men. Moved by most Spaniards’ determination to defend themselves […]
Not A BRHG Event
The Haymarket, Chicago and Mayday On the evening of Tuesday May 4th 1886 near the Haymarket, Chicago, armed police attempted to violently disperse a few hundred members of a peaceful demonstration called to protest about the police killing of striking workers. As the police moved against the crowd a bomb was thrown by an unknown person wounding several of their number. In the ensuing chaos the police opened fire slaughtering demonstrators and police alike. In the days following the incident […]
Captain Jack White DSO attracted adjectives like jam does wasps - flamboyant, gallant, romantic, handsome, idiosyncratic, incorrigible - and every one of them was appropriate. He was a Presbyterian from the northern part of Ireland who fought in the Boer War, became the first commander of the Irish Citizen Army in the 1913 Dublin Lockout, was arrested for sedition during WW1, fell foul of all the police/paramilitary/governmental authorities in Ireland between 1913 and 1936, and participated in […]
This talk will focus on an on-going research project into the anarchist elements of the wider Spanish community in Dowlais and Abercraf, c.1900-1920. Following a shortage of labour during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) the management of the Dowlais Iron Works used its subsidiary company in the Basque region to encourage Spanish labourers and their families to move to South Wales. By 1911 there were 264 Spaniards in the borough of Merthyr Tydfil, part of an international community which also […]
