Thomas Venner and the Fifth Monarchists Insurrection (6th January 1661) Some members of BRHG, 'The James Nayler Brigade' travelled to London on Sunday to support our comrade 5th Monarchists and Muggletonians. Armed with hatchets and a pike (which we had buried some years ago in readiness for the reimposition of the satanic monarchy) we helped storm the Guild Hall and St. Paul's in celebration of the 5th Monarchist rising against the return of the King on 6th january 1661. One of the leaders of […]
Havoc in its Third Year is Bennett’s third novel. It is set the 1630s in the period leading up to the English civil wara town in northern England which had recently removed a corrupt and tyrannical local aristocrat, only then to be ruled by a new repressive puritanical regime. Bennett is a writer of deep political conviction and this novel deals with universal themes, in particular the corrupting forces of power, fear of the outsider and the destitute and the nature of moral and political […]
Bristol writer Andrew Miller’s sixth novel and deservedly won the 2011 Costa Book of the Year. It is 1785 and France is on the brink of revolution as the old order is about to be swept away. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer of humble background, is ordered to exhume the vast and ancient cemetery of Les Innocents in the poor Parisian quarter of Les Halles and demolish its church. Baratte, ambitious and forward thinking, “a disciple of Voltaire,” dreams of building utopias and as a man of […]
A website that has a lot of infomation about anarchism and some history pamphlets. For the first decade or so of the web the struggle site provided a home for pages concerned with the struggle for freedom. This included social struggles in Ireland; the Zapatistas, Irish history, anarchist theory and history, globalisation and many others. In 2004 there were over 5,000 documents and images on this site.
Thomas Spence was one of the leading English revolutionaries of the late 18th Century. His tracts, such as The Rights of Man (Spence was, perhaps, the first to use the phrase) and The Rights of Infants, along with his utopian visions of 'Crusonia' and 'Spensonia', were the most far-reaching radical statements of the period. Although sometimes hailed as England's 'first modern socialist', Spence is not easily corralled by later ideologies. He was a mortal enemy of tyranny and what he called […]
A series of lectures, presentations and discussion presented by Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) emphasising the importance and relevance of radical history. Using a diverse series of historical case studies the speakers will demonstrate the various interventions BRHG have made into their local and national histories including: uncovering hidden histories challenging established narratives questioning previous generations of 'radical history' linking new narratives and critiques with current […]
Radicalism, Monarchy And The Lost Liberties Of Anglo-Saxon Egland 1790-1820 - Steve Poole Although the English Jacobins of the 1790s were frequently characterised by their enemies as Republican followers of Tom Paine, in reality many of them could only commit to following Paine so far. The Rights of Man were all very well as long as they could be advocated without dumping long standing and cherished beliefs in an anglo-saxon golden age of elected chieftans and voluntary association - historical […]
The aim of this talk is to take a fresh look at the image of Britain’s first Public Enemy Number One: Thomas Paine. From the 1790s onwards, Paine’s political and religious writings symbolized everything that the British establishment feared about radical ideas and the rise of the ‘common’ reader. Paine ensured his terrorist credentials with the publication of the Rights of Man (1791-2), but this talk will focus on his other massively subversive book, Age of Reason (1795), a study in ‘infidel’ […]
The Tyrannicide Brief - Geoffrey Robertson Renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC examines the first trial of a head of state - Charles I, and how this groundbreaking moment in history opened the way for the trials of Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Saddam Hussein. Robertson became a barrister in 1973 and a QC in 1988. His became well known acting for the defence in the celebrated English criminal trials of Oz, Gay News, the 'ABC Trial', The Romans in Britain (the […]
The Kett Rebellion was a sudden explosion of popular feeling against the enclosure policies of the Tudor government that swept through Norfolk in the summer of 1549. 20,000 people led by Robert Kett created a self-governing camp outside Norwich. It required two military expeditions from London to suppress the uprising. Listen to this talk: Download Peter Clark's talk (50mins, 8.8mb mp3 file)
