In November 2014 the Bishop of Bristol, preaching to school students, claimed that ‘speculation’ about the ‘business roots’ of the city’s philanthropic icon, Edward Colston, was merely ‘speculation’. These incendiary words inspired complaints, protests and new historical research into Colston’s slave-trading activities and his role as a ‘City Father.’ They also led to the formation of the campaign group Countering Colston which challenged both the physical commemoration and […]
Ingrid Jones has worked for acta community theatre for the past thirty years. Over this time she has devised and directed numerous community plays many of which had a local history focus, including: 1963, Gas Girls, Clippies, Ladies Mile, Sailor’s Tales, Lost not Forgotten and more recently Welcome to the Hippodrome. In this presentation Ingrid will be talking about acta’s method of digging out local stories and the process of developing them into theatre performances. Time will be given for any […]
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 […]
In the summer of 1901 the Bristol Tramways Company sacked 90 employees who had recently joined the Gasworkers’ and General Labourers’ Union. Another 300 tramways employees went on strike in support of their dismissed fellow workers. This action by the Tramways Company was a direct challenge to the trade union movement in Bristol and beyond, and the wider labour movement rallied in support of the tramwaymen. The company threw all the resources they had into defeating the union and were ultimately […]
Monday 16 October – 7.30pm-9.00pm - Friends of Eastville Park Community Hub (Nissen Hut), Eastville Park, Near Park Avenue car park, Bristol BS5 6QG In 2015, to great public interest, Eastville Workhouse Memorial Group released details of more than 4,000 paupers who were buried in unmarked graves in Rosemary Green. These were inmates from Eastville Workhouse which was situated on the present-day East Park housing estate on Fishponds Road. The burials in Rosemary Green covered the period […]
In September 1886, an explosion deep underground at the Dean Lane Colliery led to the deaths of 10 miners and life changing injuries to many others. Tony Dyer will explain the mistakes that led up to the disaster, how and why the explosion happened, the repercussions both for the miners and the local mining industry, and how it impacted safety regulations in the Bedminster mines immediately following the explosion. A descendent of Bedminster coalminers himself, Tony will look at how the […]
Join us for an evening of performance and lively discussion connected to the recently published book Haunting Ashton Court: A Creative Handbook for Collective History-Making, inspired by a community youth theatre project that took place at the mansion across Winter 2022. The evening will include performances from a company of young Bristolians responding to the gaps and silences in the official archives of Ashton Court Estate, followed by a panel Q&A with the young people involved, chaired […]
A walking tour as part of Bristol Radical History Festival Meet at the MShed front entrance at 4.00pm. Finish at the Louisiana around 5:30pm. Bristol’s city centre has been a focus for squatters making a political point: on housing need and homelessness, in solidarity with strikes, in solidarity with land struggles and in defence of the natural environment. This short tour includes five buildings squatted in the Harbourside, Old Town and Redcliffe in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and […]
Sheila Caffrey will talk about some of the picket lines and broader campaigns seen in Bristol in the last couple of years, and some of the bigger protests and how these have also affected the mood e.g. Black Lives Matter and COP-26, and the role Trades Unions have (or could have!) played in these. Sheila Caffrey is an active trade unionist in Bristol. She first got involved with Bristol Trades Council 15 years ago, after becoming a teacher and a campaigner in the National Union of Teachers […]
This panel considers the work of contemporary artists who have had an influence and impact on Bristol but sought little exposure for themselves. Two artists who have recently passed away, Steve Philbey and Tony Forbes, certainly fit the bill, as do the activities of the Bristol Refugee Artists Collective. Steve Philbey (1943 - 2022) was a painter, muralist, graphic artist, photographer and founder/chronicler of The Saint-Just Mob. And also variously a factory worker, Father Christmas, painter […]
