The history of Bristol’s Great Western Cotton Works in Barton Hill, which opened in 1838, is little known. The story of its workforce — mainly low-paid women and children — has never been told. From the 1830s to the early twentieth century, Barton Hill workers endured long working hours, high rates of industrial accidents and ill-health from the cotton dust and humidity. Moreover, they were subjected to wage cuts and fines by a series of unrelenting managers. Divided along age and gender lines […]
The Radical History Zone is back at Hydra Books, 34 Old Market, BS2 0EZ, as part of Bristol Anarchist Bookfair 2016. The main bookfair is once again at The Trinity Centre on Trinity Road. Bristol Radical History Group will also have a stall at the bookfair stocking our full range of pamphlets. We are celebrating two anniversaries this year! 2016 marks the 10th birthday of the Bristol Radical History Group. This year we have also organised the 5th Radical History Zone (RHZ). The RHZ is an […]
Venue: 12 Station Road, Ashley Down, Bristol, BS7 9LA A blue plaque for Walter Ayles will be unveiled on Sunday April 17th – the centenary of the date that Ayles was first arrested. Please put this date in your diary. The unveiling will take place from 3.30pm at the house where lived with his wife Bertha in Station Road, Ashley Down. Generous donations have enabled us to raise over £600 to pay for the plaque. Full details will be circulated nearer the date. Come along and help us honour all […]
With Since the descent into civil war in Syria, revolutionary forces have seized control of the Kurdish region of Rojava. This talk aims to assess the strengths,challenges and vulnerabilities of the revolutionary project under way there. In terms of strengths, I will focus principally on four: (1) revolutionary discipline and the power of ideology; (2) consciousness-raising, collective mobilization, and assembly democracy; (3) gender emancipation; and (4) attempts to accommodate ethnic and […]
History From Below networking and new visions of how to research and communicate radical history Transcription and slides from a multimedia talk by Roger Ball and Peter Box at Manchester Metropolitan University, 11 May, 2015 This talk covers: The recent history of movements studying History From Below: History Workshop Movement (UK), Dig Where You Stand (Sweden) and ‘Geschichtswerkstätten’ (Germany) The growth, diversity of approaches and activities in the current international History From […]
Hesitant Comrades is the first book to explore the actions and attitudes of the British working class towards the Irish Revolution of 1916–21.With sources ranging from newly discovered writings to reports of police spies, Geoffrey Bell brings to light new evidence. He shows how the leaders of British trade unions were complicit in Belfast loyalist sectarianism and he explores the troubled nature of the Labour Party's relations with its Irish community, and how the Bolsheviks criticised British […]
Steve Mills will give a talk on the contents of his recent BRHG pamphlet/'Poaching in the South West'/ which considers the poaching wars in rural areas in the 18th and 19th Centuries and the arms race conducted between the poaching gangs, landowners and game keepers. He will also look at the development of the 'poaching' laws in the period and the famous Berkeley Case. More information here. Watch this talk
This talk will focus on an on-going research project into the anarchist elements of the wider Spanish community in Dowlais and Abercraf, c.1900-1920. Following a shortage of labour during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) the management of the Dowlais Iron Works used its subsidiary company in the Basque region to encourage Spanish labourers and their families to move to South Wales. By 1911 there were 264 Spaniards in the borough of Merthyr Tydfil, part of an international community which also […]
