In 1834, six Dorset farm labourers were condemned to transportation to Australia for forming an early trade union. These 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' have become an iconic part of modern British history. But three years before the events in Tolpuddle, rural England was rocked with a massive upr1sing of farm labourers known as the 'Swing Riots'. Dr. Ball analyses why 'Tolpuddle' has lodged in popular memory and the far more significant events of 'Swing' have been distorted and forgotten. W.l. Hall, North […]
We face the greatest crisis in the history of humanity. Economic depression, imperialist war, climate catastrophe, and grotesque social inequalities threaten to tear the world apart. What is to be done? The lesson of history is that human beings make their own history. Launching his new book, A Marxist History of the World: from Neanderthals to Neoliberals, archaeologist and historian Neil Faulkner argues that history is open and contested. It is an active process of creation in which different […]
Di Parkin has been a left activist since the 1960s. She is a historian and published “60 years of struggle” history of Betteshanger, a militant Kent pit. She will be speaking about the actions on the Economic League in the 1970s, providing blacklisting information to employers and the impact on militants in places such as Cowley car works and Kent coal field. An electrician who has worked in the construction industry for 40 years will talk about his experiences of victimisation and the campaign […]
Pilar Lopez’s performance about the Spanish Social Revolution of 1936 aims to draw inspiration from these amazing times, sharing the beauty and relevance of those events and making links with what's currently happening in Spain. In 1936, after a partially unsuccessful military coup and by popular demand, the libertarian unions took control of the organisation of society in many parts of Spain. In no time large portions of land and industry had been collectivised and belonged to the workers. This […]
Running down Whitehall with a black flag. Memories of anarchism in the 1960s Di Parkin was a revolutionary activist from the early 1960s to the 1980s. She was employed as a community worker and an Equal Opportunities Adviser. Her PhD was on opposition to the myth of National Unity in Second World War Britain and she published a book on the history of a militant coal mine (Betteshanger) in Kent Now retired, she devotes most of her energy to the Bristol Radical History group: working on recording […]
Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Race, Class and Gender in the 60s U.S. This talk is based upon a series of books that have recently appeared covering the hidden history of the white working class radical community groups who formed the 'Rainbow Coalition' with the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Native American and Japanese American revolutionary groups in 1969. The white radical organisations comprised displaced 'Southern' white working class people who were challenging […]
“We’ll eat all we please from ham and egg trees that grow by a lake full of beer? The landlord well take and tie to a stake and we won?t have to work like a slave..." In the face of a life defined by exploitation and suffering, the poor of the Middle Ages dreamed up a fantastical land where their sufferings were reversed; where people lived in idleness and plenty and the rich were barred. "Those who sleep the longest earn the most here." This myth of a free earthly paradise emerged in a popular […]
Elaine Titcombe. History PhD Student, The University of the West of England, Bristol. In 1984 the doomsday clock reached three minutes to midnight. This was the closest recorded time to global destruction defined (at that time) as imminence to nuclear war, since 1953. This crisis arose as a result of an escalation of militarism between the East and West Superpowers, following the NATO decision in 1979 to modernise their theatre of nuclear weapons in response to the perceived superiority of the […]
British armed forces’ strikes and mutinies in 1918-19: a radical history project for the anniversary of World War I BRHG’s very own Roger Ball will kick off the afternoon with the conveniently forgotten history of British armed forces’ post WWI strikes and mutinies. Roger reveals how the mass refusal of troops across Europe included expressions of militant dissent in Britain. Such widespread revolt led to the collapse of the Allied invasion of Soviet Russia. The second part of the meeting will […]
The Radical History Zone of the Bristol Anarchist Book Fair will get off to a cracking start as author Eveline Lubbers shines a light on corporate and police spying on activists – the topic of her new book, Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark. In the best tradition of radical Investigative research. Secret Manoeuvres includes revelations from the Economic League’s blacklisting of trade unionists, to the McLibel case to the high-profile exposure of police spy Mark Kennedy. Secret Manoeuvres treads on […]
