News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

Gallipoli and Bristol

By Ian Wright

A WoundedTurkish Infantryman Having A Drink Of Water

The horses, the horses, we couldn't get the horses off the beach; we should not have been there A British veteran of Gallipoli In the Autumn of 1914 a number of men from Bristol were recruited into the 7th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment. They spent the winter in billets in Basingstoke and then moved to Aldershot in February 1915 for final training. They sailed from Avonmouth on 19 June landing at Alexandria, then moving to Mudros on 4 July to prepare for a landing at a place called […]

Arrowsmith and the ‘Bristol Revolution’ of 1831

By John Sidwell

I was fortunate enough to acquire, among a collection of books, both the 1884 and the considerably expanded 1906 edition of Arrowsmith’s Dictionary of Bristol, edited by Henry J. Spear and J. W. Arrowsmith. Concurrent with other research I have been conducting into the Bristol riots of 1831 I perused the entry in each edition and was struck by the volume of revisions. It should initially be noted that the account given in the 1906 edition is substantially longer. As such it is perhaps the detail […]

Do You Have A Conchie In The Family?

From 1916-19 many men & women in Bristol organised opposition to conscription. Dozens of Bristolians were imprisoned as conscientious objectors. These included Walter Ayles, who was a city councillor and Bristol's most prominent opponent of World War 1; the three Reinge brothers from Totterdown who were all imprisoned for refusing to join the army; George Barker who hid fugitives in the cellar of his bicycle shop in Bedminster; the Whiteford brothers from St George, one of whom refused to […]

Hoof Hustings

By Randell Brantley

This film is to be premièred on a big screen at Our Forest My Vote (The Hoof Husting) at Forest Theatre, Five Acres college, at 6.30pm on Wed April 22. It will be followed by a Question Time-style debate with the audience, HOOF and parliamentary candidates, asking what will they do to protect our Forest of Dean? Entry: voluntary donation (suggested £1). hoofelection2015.wordpress.com/. Film set to music from Dick Brice, Max, Forest of Dean Brass, Asha Faria-Vare, Billy Bragg & Heathens All, […]

Tracing Movements

Resistance Struggles against Immigration Controls in Europe

Tracing Movements is a collection of films documenting struggles against immigration controls in Europe. At RHZ, we will be screening two films: Patra, Dead End relates the campaigns to stop the destruction of migrant camps in the port-town of Patra, Greece. Today, migrants continue to live in limbo, with no chance of gaining in Greece, and stopped from continuing their westward journey. Across the Adriatic in the fields of southern Italy, seasonal migrant workers live segregated from Italian […]

All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal

Reading History From Below

Published in 2012, All Knees and Elbows critically surveys tendencies which sought to uncover the agency of ‘ordinary’ people in challenging capitalism and developing different forms of social organisation. All Knees and Elbows engages the work of a number of British and international left historians and groups, including Silvia Federici, History Workshop, Eric Hobsbawm, C.L.R James, Peter Linebaugh, Sheila Rowbotham, Jacques Rancière and E.P. Thompson. Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts will […]

Strikers, Hobblers, Conchies and Reds + The Berkeley Poachers’

Book and pamphlet launch

Members of our very own Bristol Radical History Group will share some choice snippets from their research as an appetiser to promote two new publications, including the group’s first book-length collaboration. Strikers, Hobblers and Conchies is published by Breviary Stuff. Watch this talk

Cultures of solidarity and the 1984-85 miners’ strike

All Out! Dancing in Dulais! tells the story of London Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a group which twinned with a mining community in South Wales. The inspiration for the recent film Pride, it is one of many examples of grassroots film-making during the 1984-5 British miners' strike. After watching the documentary, we will discuss the broad range of solidarity activism during one of the most significant strikes in British labour history: trade unionists, feminists, black activists and […]

Housing Activism and Squatting in 1970’s Bristol

Includes a screening of 18-minute documentary The Law Breakers (1973). Mac will begin by giving a brief personal/political history of what motivated him to get involved. He will be covering the squatting campaign that took place between 1972-1974 in Ashley Road Bristol, and direct action taken like the occupation of The South West Electricity Board showrooms (SWEB,) for example. The BBC West documentary will feature previously homeless single parent families, a support meeting by 'Bristol […]

Siegi Moos and the Anti-Nazi Movement in pre-War Germany

Siegi Moos was an active anti-Nazi 1928-1933 in Berlin, a time which ended with the Nazis gaining power and Siegi going underground, before escaping Germany altogether. Little publicity is given to anti-Nazi movement in Germany, which Siegi’s activities shed light on. Although many of the organisations which make up this movement were originally established or supported by the German Communist Party (KPD), they were in practice semi-autonomous. Indeed, the Red Front, a crucial - and from 1929, […]