Not A BRHG Event
From Curzon Cinema website.... We’re thrilled to be joined by Pauline Black, in-person, for a Q&A after the film screening with Dr. Peter Webb. Pauline Black, lead singer of 2-Tone hit band The Selecter, tells her extraordinary life story in the same frank manner that helped shape her as an iconic, era-defining female musician. Pauline had a difficult upbringing and joining the 2-Tone music movement in 1979 was the perfect catalyst; enabling her to explore and express all sides of herself. […]
Not A BRHG Event
This talk considers, from a Bristol perspective, the huge wave of strikes involving tens, if not hundreds of thousands of personnel in the British Armed forces at the end of World War One. Mass insubordination, refusals and in some cases mutiny swept through army, navy and air force personnel in January 1919. Driven by the desire for immediate demobilisation and fears that politicians and military leaders might commit them to the ongoing invasion of revolutionary Russia and other colonial […]
Not A BRHG Event
An illustrated talk about a notorious madhouse run as a private business for 120 years, with some startling revelations. Based on the BRHG publication No Cure, No Fee, Boarding excepted. Long before the NHS, those who did not fit ‘the norm’ were consigned to workhouses or to private lunatic asylums. The latter provided a profitable business opportunity, as the wealthy were only too keen to offload family members whose behaviour was inconvenient. It was a system open to abuses that Daniel Defoe […]
Not A BRHG Event
Inspired by Rosemary Caldicott's Life and Death of Hannah Wiltshire BRHG are pleased to announce that Bedminster based acta and Pick N Mix Theatre have researched, written and produced a play based on this fascinating story about their local workhouse. From their website: A retelling of the investigation into the events that took place at Bedminster Union Workhouse in 1855. Step into the haunting history of Bedminster’s Union Workhouse with an immersive play brought to life by two acta groups. […]
Not A BRHG Event
An illustrated talk about a notorious madhouse run as a private business for 120 years, with some startling revelations. Based on the BRHG publication No Cure, No Fee, Boarding excepted. Long before the NHS, those who did not fit ‘the norm’ were consigned to workhouses or to private lunatic asylums. The latter provided a profitable business opportunity, as the wealthy were only too keen to offload family members whose behaviour was inconvenient. It was a system open to abuses that Daniel Defoe […]
Bristol’s new gaol on Cumberland Road first opened its doors for business in 1820. Ambitiously conceived as a modern alternative to the crumbling, insecure and insanitary old prison at Newgate, the architects of the New Gaol sought to turn punishment into a science. Systems of hard labour, a treadwheel, constant surveillance, segregation, religious instruction and minimal interpersonal association were intended to target prisoners’ minds as well their bodies. The New Gaol’s reputation amongst […]
During the strike, in response to the horrific images of miners and their supporters being battered by the police, donations of cash were received from around the world, More money was raised in Ireland per head of population than anywhere else, Britain included, with many support groups being set up to 'adopt' individual mining communities. The story is told of one elderly woman in Dublin putting a £10 note, a large proportion of her pension, into a collection tin. She said it was to repay the […]
The Great Hunger of the late 1840s devastated Ireland and had a profound impact on the wider world. Around 10% of the population perished from hunger and disease, while a further 10% fled into exile to escape the famine at home. The Irish population in Britain doubled between 1841 and 1861. By 1900, two in every five Irish people were living overseas. Unsurprisingly, this remains one of the most contested chapters in Irish history. In this presentation Fin Dwyer tackles the history of this most […]
Local author Lin Clark introduces the subject of her new book Swift Blaze of Fire - the Life of Robert Hilliard: Olympian, Cleric, Brigadista her grandfather. Robert Hilliard was born in 1904; his family were loyalist Killarney factory owners who hoped he’d find a niche in Ireland’s British-run establishment. Yet 32 years later, as a member of the International Brigades, he was overjoyed to see Barcelona under workers' control. Fatally wounded at the Battle of Jarama, he died in February 1937. […]
Radical Alternatives to Prison (RAP) was set up in 1970 in London by a group of ex-prisoners and people connected with the prison service. We are very pleased to have Ros Kane speaking, one of the co-founders of RAP, along with the late Sandra Roskowski. Ros practiced as a psychiatric social worker at Wormwood Scrubs Prison Hospital before helping found the organisation. Ros's talk will cover why RAP was set up, how it operated and what it proposed as alternatives (schemes from both sides of the […]
After a 10 year wait BRHG are very pleased to announce a special one-off showing of London Recruits as part of this years festival. The film will be followed by a discussion by some of those who took part in actions against the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1960s and 70s. By the late 1960s, the Apartheid regime in South Africa had reached brutal new heights. Nelson Mandela and other freedom fighters had been imprisoned, killed or forced into exile. The African National Congress (ANC) […]
A personal account of the experience of growing up gay in 1970’s Ireland ,and how gay activists and punk rock musicians (including artists like Phil Chevron along with British bands and songwriters) inspired a new generation defending and fighting for ‘a love that did not have a name'. Presented by Eoin Freeney, Punk Rocker member of Chant! Chant! Chant!, Former Gay activist, and cofounder in 1991 of ‘ Muted Cupid" Irelands first gay community theatre group.
Reviewing the relationship between the Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s and the LGBT movement, this talk concentrates on the origins of LGBT periodicals as part of the alternative press of the period. It will cover such topics as the underground culture of gay men when male homosexuality was illegal, the repercussions of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1967 and the campaign of legal discrimination to which both the early LGBT press and the alternative press were subjected in […]
