News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

Northern Radical History Network

The 3rd Northern Radical History Network meeting will take place on Saturday 6th October 2012 at Manchester Metropolitan University. The day will run from 11am to 4.30pm in the John Dalton Building (Rooms E244 & E246), Manchester Metropolitan University (All Saints Campus) on Oxford Road, Manchester. Speakers include: Bill Williams, respected historian of Manchester and author of ‘Jews and other foreigners’: Manchester and the Rescue of the Victims of European Fascism, 1933-1940 Steve […]

Otherstory Puppetry At Art On Hill

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Otherstory puppetry collective are exhibiting and performing this weekend 6th/7th October 12-6 at 101 Philip Street, Bedminster as part of the Art on Hill arts trail. Come and join us and see animations, puppets and sets, masks and other art work made by the members of the collective. There will be a performances each day at 5.00p.m. of 'Not only to rock the boat but indeed to sink it' - the rousing tale of Grania Uaile the Pirate Queen of County Mayo and her pirate crew who defied the marauders […]

The True History of the Kelley Gang

By Peter Carey

The best book to give a full historical account of Ned Kelley’s life is Ian Jones's excellent 1995 biography. Jones tells us that Kelly was a heroic man maddened by injustice and driven to become an outlaw as a result of his struggle against oppression. However if you want to find out what it may have really felt like to be Ned Kelley read The True History of the Kelley Gang. Carey succeeds in giving this extraordinary man a voice and makes him achingly real. His life story is narrated […]

Why The Hillsborough Panel Has Not Reported The Truth

By Daniel Bennett

On April 15, 1989 I was sitting in the North Stand at Hillsborough with a perfect view of the Leppings Lane end. Along with 40,000-odd other people I witnessed what has now been described as the biggest cover up in modern British history. How can you cover up something which is witnessed by over 40,000 people? As a 19-year-old, I returned to college after the spring break to read and watch reports of events which I knew to be false. It was not just The Sun. False reports were published by the […]

The Instance of the Fingerpost

By Ian Pears

This novel is set in Oxford during the restoration in the 1660s, a time of complex intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment and uses a mix of both real and fictitious historical figures. The murder of Dr Robert Grove, a fellow of New College, and the events surrounding it are narrated from four significantly different points of view. Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic doctor newly arrived in Britain; Jack Prescott, son of a Royalist traitor and desperate to clear his father’s […]

Getting ‘Jerusalem’ Wrong

By Roger Ball

A Review of 'Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law' by E.P.Thompson ‘Christ died as an unbeliever’ [William Blake] ‘Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! we have Hirelings in the Camp. the Court. & the University: who would if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War’ [William Blake] Watching the Olympic opening ceremony the other night I noticed that the hymn Jerusalem so beloved of public schools, […]

a glorious Liberty

By A L Morton The Ranters formed the extreme left wing of the sects which came into prominence during the English Revolution, both theologically and politically. Theologically these sects lay between the poles of orthodox Calvinism, with its emphasis on the power and justice of God as illustrated in the grand scheme of election and reprobation, with its insistence upon the reality of Hell in all its most literal horrors and upon the most verbal and dogmatic acceptance of the Scriptures, and of […]

Newport Chartist Convention

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This year's 'Newport Chartist Convention' is being held at the City Campus of the University at Newport from 11am to 3pm Key note speaker: Professor Malcolm Chase (Leeds University) "Welsh Chartism: Looking beyond November 1839" Malcolm Chase is the leading Chartist historian in the UK today - author of 'Chartism: a new history" (2007) In this lecture, Professor Chase will draw upon his recent Llafur article (2010) "Rethinking Welsh Chartism" and place the Rising at Newport in 1839 into a […]

State Intervention and the Abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme

The Bristol Experience

By Mike Richardson

Now and again certain key industrial disputes serve as a reminder that the state not only plays a central role in struggles between capital and labour, but that its interventions tend to be heavily biased towards employers. One such dispute concerned the abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) in 1989, and the return of casual employment. In this case, state intervention was not only decisive in curtailing the ability of trade unions to take strike action but also delivered to the […]

The Blood Never Dried

A People's History of the British Empire

By John Newsinger

This year is seeing a veritable frenzy of spectaculars encouraging the sad old supremecist idea that Being British is something to be jolly well/fucking proud of, what with all our institutions and history and achievements. Our diversity in particular has been cited as a significant reason we got lumbered with the Olympics and the French didn't. Anybody wishing to read something that presents a less uncritical evaluation of these ideas and an unsanitised history of some of the "achievements" […]