News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

Revisiting The Monocled Mutineer with Paul McGann

BBC TV’s ‘The Monocled Mutineer’ star, Paul McGann, in conversation with Lois Bibbings from Remembering the Real World War 1 and the University of Bristol.

The Red Violinist

A talk illustrated with six musical interludes on Eduard Soermus, an Estonian violinist who lived in Merthyr Tydfil at the end of the First World War but was expelled from Britain in 1919. The concert in Bargoed that led to his expulsion was chaired by conscientious objector Morgan Evans (later an MP) and the debate at the concert between Bolshevik-supporting Soermus, the Independent Labour Party pacifist Evans and an outraged soldier in the audience dramatically illustrates the division of […]

Otherstory puppet theatre: ‘Taking a Holiday’

Taking a Holiday is a tale of conscientious objectors and others who went on the run from conscription during the First World War – and of the networks that supported them. A story of struggle in wartime – full of intrigue, escapes, comradeship…and bikes. What does it mean to be a refugee and on the run in your own country? Who will give you a bed for the night, a job… or a means of escape? A table top and shadow puppet show based on the true stories of ordinary people in 1916/17 and the hidden […]

Closing speech by Bruce Kent (CND)

The Commemoration, Conflict & Conscience festival weekend will be closed by Bruce Kent of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

Conscience Panel

A rich and complex history: conscientious objection to the military in the First World War (Lois Bibbings) This talk revisits what we know about objectors – in terms of their thoughts, motivations, decision-making and actions as well as how they were seen and treated – in order to reflect on the importance of portraying this (and other) rich and complex stories of protest and resistance. John Percy Fletcher, Thomas Gregory, and the Quaker campaign against compulsory military training in New […]

Student Voices After The Great War

Commemorating Conflict, Building Peace

Between 1914 and 1918, young people fought and fell on the battlefield in unprecedented numbers. Our event captures the voices of those who survived the conflict and returned to study at college or university, supported by the first government grants for higher education. The scheme for ex-service students helped individuals who would have otherwise been unable to afford higher education, and boosted the numbers in the universities. While mourning the fallen, this generation built a student […]

Commemoration Panel 2

The In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, a cultural and transnational museum about WWI (Piet Chielens) The Ypres Salient, the infamous bulge in the front line around the Belgian city of Ypres was one of the major battlefields on the Western Front. Over 220,000 British and Commonwealth lives were lost there between 1914 and 1918. Cemeteries, monuments and the Menin Gate, the very first Missing Memorial ever built, are the main reasons why British people have visited and still continue to visit […]

Women and Opposition To War – 2

'It is up to women to start a crusade for peace!' Bradford Women’s Humanity League, 1916-18 (Eve Haskins) Existing research on female war resistance in Britain focuses mainly upon the educated middle-class women who had the time and resources to oppose the war, however the peace seeking efforts of working-class women has been little acknowledged, especially in individual regions. Recent research on the nationwide anti-war organisation the Women’s Peace Crusade has begun to address this research […]

Women and Opposition To War – 1

Patriotic Peace Service: German Women against the War (Ingrid Sharp) Even before the war broke out in August 1914, the leading German women’s organisation was ready with a plan for a National Women’s Service offering patriotic support for the war. They organised women to replace the working men who had volunteered or been conscripted into the army, dispensed food and home management advice to struggling families, and packed comfort parcels to send to the front. But there were other German women […]

Commemoration Through Drama

Play 1: 'War In Mind' - John Bassett, Spaniel In The Works Theatre Company This new powerful dramatic performance looks at the lives of real people affected by shell shock in the First World War. Driver William Charles Phillips, a Tetbury man who though he never actively fought at the front, died in Gloucester Asylum from paralysis in 1917. Doctor Harold Hills, a Stroud doctor, who worked with sufferers at the Front and prevented many men being shot for desertion through his testimonies. Violet […]