When both levees and governments failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the anarchist-inspired Common Ground Collective was created to fill the void. With the motto of 'Solidarity Not Charity', they worked to create power from below; building autonomous projects, programs, and spaces of self-sufficiency like health clinics and neighborhood assemblies, while also supporting communities defending themselves from white militias and police brutality, illegal home demolitions and […]
In 1917, socialist, feminist and anti-war activist, Alice Wheeldon, her daughter Winnie and husband Alf Mason were given long prison sentences for supposedly plotting to kill the Prime Minister Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson, the leader of the Labour Party. The evidence was flimsy, their accuser an MI5 agent provocateur so dubious the prosecution kept him away from the trial. It was a time when Britons were increasingly vocal in their opposition to the continuing and pointless carnage of the […]
One hundred years ago, on July 15, 1915, two hundred thousand Welsh miners launched a strike for higher pay. Their coal was powering the Royal Navy in the midst of a world war. The miners defied the coalowners, the government, the law, the king and their own leaders. Why? And what lessons, if any, can be learnt for today? Robert Griffiths is a labour historian and currently General Secretary of the Communist Party.
Some AngryWorkers will be round and about England in the next few weeks showing a brand new documentary about the logistics workers' struggles/movement in Italy. Called 'Ditching The Fear', this film portrays the struggle of mainly migrant workers against the harsh labour regime of companies like TNT or IKEA. These struggles emerged in 2008 and have since then, not only won better conditions, but also put workers’ self-organisation back on the wider political agenda. Workers’ militants of the […]
A talk followed by a tour at Bath City Farm. To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Bath City farm, come and hear author Sephen E. Hunt talk about the history of city farms. Street Farm was a part of the trend towards 'green' thinking during the 1970s and built the first ecological house. They had close links to the urban farming movement. email alexia@bathcityfarm.co.uk to book.
Tracing Movements is a collection of films documenting struggles against immigration controls in Europe. At RHZ, we will be screening two films: Patra, Dead End relates the campaigns to stop the destruction of migrant camps in the port-town of Patra, Greece. Today, migrants continue to live in limbo, with no chance of gaining in Greece, and stopped from continuing their westward journey. Across the Adriatic in the fields of southern Italy, seasonal migrant workers live segregated from Italian […]
Published in 2012, All Knees and Elbows critically surveys tendencies which sought to uncover the agency of ‘ordinary’ people in challenging capitalism and developing different forms of social organisation. All Knees and Elbows engages the work of a number of British and international left historians and groups, including Silvia Federici, History Workshop, Eric Hobsbawm, C.L.R James, Peter Linebaugh, Sheila Rowbotham, Jacques Rancière and E.P. Thompson. Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts will […]
Members of our very own Bristol Radical History Group will share some choice snippets from their research as an appetiser to promote two new publications, including the group’s first book-length collaboration. Strikers, Hobblers and Conchies is published by Breviary Stuff. Watch this talk
All Out! Dancing in Dulais! tells the story of London Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a group which twinned with a mining community in South Wales. The inspiration for the recent film Pride, it is one of many examples of grassroots film-making during the 1984-5 British miners' strike. After watching the documentary, we will discuss the broad range of solidarity activism during one of the most significant strikes in British labour history: trade unionists, feminists, black activists and […]
Includes a screening of 18-minute documentary The Law Breakers (1973). Mac will begin by giving a brief personal/political history of what motivated him to get involved. He will be covering the squatting campaign that took place between 1972-1974 in Ashley Road Bristol, and direct action taken like the occupation of The South West Electricity Board showrooms (SWEB,) for example. The BBC West documentary will feature previously homeless single parent families, a support meeting by 'Bristol […]
