7.00pm, Tuesday 29th November, Filwood Library, Filwood Broadway, Bristol BS4 1JN During the 1930’s militant antifascism against Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts was ingrained and established amongst the Bristolian working-class. Discontented by their many defeats in the inner-city, industrial working-class districts of Bristol the British Union of Fascists (BUF) turned their attention to the new garden suburbs springing up on the outskirts of the city. Unfortunately for the BUF, working-class […]
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South Bristol’s Garden Suburbs and Swimming Pools
7.00pm, Tuesday 22nd November, Filwood Library, Filwood Broadway, Bristol BS4 1JN The garden-city movement has had a significant impact on the development of Bristol as we know it. It aimed to create new neighbourhoods based on high-quality planning and housing design. This would transform the prospects for their residents by combining the best features of urban and rural life. BRHG member Steve Hunt will survey the influence of garden-suburb style planning upon Bristol’s spatial geography, from […]
Mary Frost, Wife, Mother, Chartist
I enjoyed this book as it is an easy read and Sylvia Mason painted a graphic picture of the times - Mary Frost's shop and home, the 1839 Chartist uprising in Newport, the family, the rallies and the spies. "Were any of the injured men bandaged and fed by the Frost women and helped to get home"? Initially I was a little irritated by the questions Sylvia Mason posed as there was no 'real' evidence, however, I soon appreciated it as a way of telling Mary's story which set the scene of the times as, […]
Nautical women – women sailors and the women of sailortowns
A forgotten diaspora c 1693-1902
Not A BRHG Event
Portishead Library, 24 Harbour Road, Portishead, BS20 7AL For more details and booking, see here. North Somerset Libraries are excited to host a series of talks by Bristol Radical History pamphleteers. Visit www.brh.org.uk to find out more about their publications and events. The talks are informal and accessible and would appeal to adults and older teens. The library will be open and there will time to borrow books from our local history display, so bring your library card with you. If you […]
Bedminster Poor Law Union Workhouse
Not In An Event Series
Pill Library and Children's Centre, Crockerne House, Underbanks, Pill BS20 0AT For more details and booking see here. North Somerset Libraries are excited to host a series of talks by Bristol Radical History pamphleteers. Visit www.brh.org.uk to find out more about their publications and events. The talks are informal and accessible and would appeal to adults and older teens. Self-service kiosks will be on and there will time to borrow books from our local history display, so bring your library […]
Edward Colston – A century of protest
Not A BRHG Event
In June 2020, the statue of Edward Colston in central Bristol was removed from its plinth by Black Lives Matter protestors and rolled into the waters of the Harbourside. Some saw this as an isolated event – in fact it was the culmination of a century of protest against what was dubbed “the cult of Colston” in the city. Roger and Mark will be talking about the foundations of opposition to Colston as a trader of enslaved persons and his reinvention as a Victorian icon. They will explore the […]
The Rise and Fall of Edward Colston
Not A BRHG Event
Register for this online talk here. 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 new historical research into Colston’s slave-trading activities and the origins of his role as a ‘City Father.’ They also led to the formation of the campaign group Countering Colston which challenged both the physical commemoration […]
Facing up to the Fascists
Confronting the National Front in Bristol in the 1970s
Not A BRHG Event
Thurs 27th October 12.30-1.30pm Foyer, Bristol Central Library, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5TL As part of the ongoing exhibition of resistance to fascism in the city in the 1970s at the Central Reference Library Colin Thomas will speak about how the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism resisted the National Front in Bristol in the 1970s and 80s – and won. The first warning came fifty years ago – the National Front decided to put up candidates in Bristol. The party was led by John Tyndall […]
The Cry of the Poor
"Being a Letter from Sixteen Working Men of various trades, to the Sixteen Aldermen of Bristol."
Not A BRHG Event
The University of Fishponds 30th October 2022, 7pm - 9pm The Nissen Hut, Eastville Park £5 per person SOLD OUT! This impassioned and lucidly argued letter, written in 1871, set out demands for improvements to the quality of life for Bristol's working people: clean air, parks, bathing places, libraries, a fish market and an end to bridge tolls. Over the subsequent 20 years most of these demands were met. However, 150 years on from that letter we find ourselves fighting to retain some of those […]
Claude Mickleson
Claude Mickleson, socialist activist, born 1923. Claude’s story is of a working-class life with all its ups and downs. His different jobs and life experiences provide the backdrop to his continued political activism as he approaches his 100th birthday. Claude was interviewed by Trish Mensah for the Activist Memories series, supported by Bristol Older People’s Forum. The Activist Memories series captures, through oral history interviews, the life experience of those who have fought for a better […]