Bristol Radical History Week 2006: Programme
Bristol Radical History Week was held between 28th October and 5th November 2006. This page contains the full programme of events for that week.
As well as the above events there was a week long art exhibition at the Spy Glass and a display of radical literature at Bristol Central Reference Library. Click here for details.
The Atlantic Slave Trade : Resistance and Rebellion
There were two evenings of lectures covering this theme (click the links for full details):
- Slavery: Resistance and Rebellion 1, Tuesday 31st October
- Slavery: Resistance and Rebellion 2, Wednesday 1st November
With the end of the British Empire and post-colonial studies there has been a significant need to assess the legacy of slavery. Much of the consequent history has been 'victim' orientated as a response to official histories. 2007 is the 200th anniversary of the 'so-called' end of slave trade. The British government has already stated that this 'celebration' will be centred around the legal reformers who 'abolished' the slave trade. Finally the context of slavery has been tightly defined by race.
None of these approaches are satisfactory as far as we are concerned. We are instead interested in the class nature of slavery, the activity of the slaves themselves and those exploited by the trade. These lectures will consider the long history of slavery in Bristol (both black and white), the numerous slave revolts that occurred in the Atlantic and the anti-slavery movement in Bristol. In addition speakers will provide their own critique of the 200th anniversary 'celebration' of the end of the slave trade.
Speakers: Madge Dresser, Richard Hart, Chris Brian, Dave Cullum, Edson Burton, Mark Steeds
Rebel slaves hanging French officers in Santa Domingo.
Maroon leader Cudjo signs a treaty with the English authorities, 1739.
The Jamaican Maroon leader Leonard Parkinson, 1796.
Bristol's Insurrectionary History
There were two lectures and one panel discussion covering this theme (click the links for full details):
- Insurrectionary Bristol: 1831, Sunday 29th October
- Insurrectionary Bristol: 1980, Friday 3rd November
- Insurrectionary Bristol: Revolt of the Unemployed, Saturday 4th November
Bristol 1831, St. Pauls & Southmead 1980….were these events anarchy, crime, riot, insurrection or uprising? Much of the insurrectionary history of Bristol is misrepresented by those who do not believe 'common' people can have any thought or organized practice. Why are the French uprisings of 1789-1793 understood to be a revolution and 1831 in Bristol a drunken criminal mob? Why is it that the St. Pauls riot of 1980 exists in the memory but the Southmead events of the same weekend are forgotten? These talks will give an insight into the real nature of these and other events by both historians and eye-witnesses. We will try to uncover how and why they have been misrepresented or obscured and what influence they really had on the politics of the time.
Background Reading: Southmead Riots - by John Serpico
Speakers: Ian Bone, Ann Warden, Johnny Evans, Dave Backwith
Bristol Riots, L. Haghe, 1831
Queen Square 30th October 1831,
R. Cartwight 1831
Religious Radicals
There are two panel discussions covering this theme (click the links for full details):
- Religious Radicals 1: James Nayler , Saturday 28th October
- Religious Radicals 2: Dorothy Hazzard, Thursday 2nd November
Religious Radicals 1: James Nayler will be proceeded by the Launch Event.
Dorothy Hazard and James Nayler represented controversial radical religious currents in the 17th Century. Both of these preachers were products of an extraordinary time where the nature of religious belief, class, gender and sexuality were being challenged by non-conformist religious currents. Both were intentionally written out of history or forgotten until their recent rehabilitation. So was James Nayler a raving madman, the George Galloway of his time (as has been suggested by some) or an extraordinarily insightful activist for social change? Why were the actions of Dorothy Hazzard so important? These seminars will try to answer these questions.
Speakers: Brian Perry, Jonathan Barry, Phil Dickinson, Jonathan Harlow, Peter Linebaugh
James Nayler
Mistress Dorothy Hazard and the Women of Bristol Defending The Frome Gate 1643.
Title page of Heresiograph by E. Paggitt, 1654
Bristol and the Revolutionary Atlantic
There was a whole day of lectures and debates covering this theme (click the link for full details):
Did you know that in 1780 7% of the population of London was black? Did you know that at the same time 25% of the British Navy was black? Recent work on the theme of the 'Atlantic proletariat' in works such as the The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic has called into question the accepted history of the division of labourers, sailors and other workers by race and nation in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in Atlantic ports such as Bristol. Instead it suggests that before measures for these divisions were put into place by the various ruling Empires, impressed sailors, indentured labourers, the transported and slaves fraternized together and fermented rebellions against their conditions. They often mutinied, became pirates, plotted insurrections or deserted to maroon colonies. These lectures will try to highlight the processes that led to revolts by these 'motley crews', to gauge how successful they were in escaping from their exploited existence and to see how the British rulers tried to deal with the 'Hydra' of revolt it had created.
Speakers: Peter Linebaugh, Ruth Symister, Niklas Frykman, Mark Steeds
Anne Bonny, pirate.
Pirate Bartholomew Roberts
John the Painter, 1777.
Radical Bristol: the 1790's
There is an evening of lectures and debates covering this theme (click the link for full details):
The American and French revolutions marked the rise of an overt politics that both challenged the monarchies of Europe and proposed an alternative form of government in the form of the fledgling Republics. The new political ideas energized both intellectuals and artists in the middle classes and more dangerously began to diffuse into the emerging political movements of the working class in Britain. In the 1790s Britain was rife with rumours of 'Jacobin insurrectionary plots', show trials, Romantic revolutionaries and politicised mobs who might just push things a little too far….
Bristol had its share of pamphleteers and activists and high profile figures such as Coleridge, Beddoes and Southey. We will be looking at both this subversive milieu and the increasingly polarised popular politics, the 1792 strike wave and the rise of the radical mob.
Speakers: Mike Jay, Steve Poole, Steve Mills
Frontispiece of the Black Dwarf,
first published by
Thomas Jonathan Wooler in 1817.
Margaret Nicholson's attempted
assassination of King George III,
Robert Dighton 1786
These were opportunity to meet the author and hear them speak about one of their works.
Mike Jay
Monday 30th October, The Spy Glass, 3:30-5pm, Donation
Mike Jay talked about the his book The Unfortunate Colonel Despard. Conspiracy and British Jacobinism in the late 18th Century. Click here for details.
Mike Manson
Thursday 2nd November, The Spy Glass, 3-5pm, Donation
Mike Manson wrote 'Riot!' The Bristol Bridge Massacre of 1793. Click here for details.
Peter Linebaugh
Friday 3rd November, The Spy Glass, 3-5pm, Donation
Peter Linebaugh talked about Magna Carta And The Commons, which he was putting the finishing touches to at the time. Or, How Bad King John Pretended to Launch a Crusade against Islam in order to better Conceal his Robbery of the People's Hydrocarbon Energy Resources which at the time (1215-17) took the form of Woodlands; and, Whether the Hydrocarbon Energy Resources which in our day (2006) take the form of Petroleum can be Restored to the “communa tocius terre,” or not. Click here for details.
James Nayler
Saturday 28th October : 11.30 am : Corn St.
Be 'your own personal Jesus' and join in with the 'Hosannas' as James Nayler, his palm wielding Cancan Dancers and a troop of Roundhead pike and musketmen parade from the Centre via Corn St. to Castle Green. Refuse to 'doff your caps' to the agents of the Crown and celebrate freedom from the religious hierarchy.
Dress : Floppy Hats
Attitude : Blasphemous
Background Reading : James Nayler's Ride into Bristol : October 1656
James Nayler entering Bristol in 1656, Robert Spence.
1831 Uprising
Sunday 29th October : 6.00 pm : Queen Square
Celebrate the popular revolt that shocked the British ruling classes into democratic reform. Join the 'mob' waving flaming brands and listen to fiery speeches as we remember the hundreds of Bristol rebels who changed the course of history.
Dress : Bawdy
Attitude : Raucous
North side of Queen Square, 1832, Rev. Eden.
West side of Queen Square Bristol the day after the dreadful conflagration, 1831, J. B. Pyne
Captain Blood
Sunday 29th October, The Cube, 8pm, £3/4
The phrase “they just don't make 'em like this any more” has never been so accurately used as when it describes Captain Blood. A roaring adventure tale from the novel by Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood is chock full of cannons and swordplay, heroism and treachery, war and romance, a beautiful heroine, and an impossibly handsome hero so lusty and full of vigour that it's difficult to catch your breath as the movie careens from one thrilling scene to the next (www.dvdverdict.com). Generally regarded as one of the more historically accurate pirate films (Hogge).
1935, 119 mins.
Starring : Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone.
Director : Michael Curtiz.
Winstanley
Monday 30th October, The Cube, 8pm, £3/4
Introduced By Randell Brantley
Based on the 1962 David Caute novel Comrade Jacob. This film deals with some of the life story of the 17th Century revolutionary and writer Gerard Winstanley, who, along with a small band of followers known as The Diggers tried to establish a self-sufficient farming community on common land at St. George's Hill near Cobham in Surrey (wikipedia). Directed by Andrew Mollo and Kevin Brownlow, this is a true masterpiece of British Independent Cinema. The talent of these two film makers unquestionable. Their vision of 17th Century England has never been bettered. Andrew Mollo's attention to period detail is unsurpassed resulting in costumes and design that are simply faultless. The cinematography is breathtaking and Kevin Brownlow's editing is masterful. Miles Haliwell plays the lead part of Gerrard Winstanley and he gives a moving and insightful performance. This is a must see film the like of which we may never see again. I am sure it taught Kubrick a lesson or two about filming period dramas (IMDB).
1975, 95 mins.
Starring: Miles Halliwell, Jerome Willis
Director: Kevin Brownlow
Clarkson
Tuesday 31st October, The Cube, 8pm, £2
Introduced by Gordon Young
This film tells the story of an unsung hero in the fight to abolish slave trading and is set in Bristol in 1787. Although Wilberforce has won public acclaim for finally outlawing the trade, it was Thomas Clarkson who provided him with much of the data that he used to back up the cause. The film is one of contrast: between the pious young divinity student, straight out of University, and the bawdy taverns and rough slave port where he conducted his fact-finding. Clarkson 'grows up' as the film develops: he acquires street wisdom and finally realises the most effective way to win the crusade.
2006, 40 mins.
Director : Graham Egarr and Gordon Young
Produced : The Bristol Film and Video Soietywww.bfvs.fsnet.co.uk
Tamango
Tuesday 31st October, The Cube, 9pm, £3/4
Introduced by Randell Brantley
Based on a novel by Prosper Mérimée it is the story of a revolt on a slave ship bound for Cuba. John Reinker, the ships captain (played by Jürgens the megalomaniac submarine thief in The Spy Who Loved Me), takes a “mixed race” mistress called Aiché (played by Dandridge). However, Aiché is also the object of affection of Tamango (played by Cressan), the leader of the slave revolt. As the revolt progresses Aiché finds herself in the middle. Will she choose self-advancement, cashing in on the status afforded to her as the mistress of a white slave trader? Or will she side with her fellow captives?
Tamango is a film that is intriguing for several reasons. The interracial love theme caused the film to be banned in some French colonies and in America no distributor would touch it, consequently it failed and has languished in obscurity ever since. It is not just the content of the film that proved controversial, the director John Berry had been black listed for the 1950 film The Hollywood Ten. This 15 minute long documentary was about the "Hollywood Ten", a group of writers and directors who where themselves blacklisted and sacked for refusing to give testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Because of Berry's past Tamango was made "in exile" with French and Italian money.
Lastly the leading lady deserved a mention. Dorothy Dandridge was not only the first black actress to play a romantic lead alongside a white leading man in a mainstream Hollywood film (Island In The Sun) but also the first African-American to grace the cover of Life Magazine in 1954. More groundbreaking followed in 1955 when she became the first African-American to receive a best actress Oscar nomination the film Carmen Jones (she lost out to Grace Kelly). Coincidently she was portrayed by Halle Berry in the 1999 TV film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Berry went on to be the first Afro-American actress to win a Best Actress Oscar in 2002. In 1965 an overdose of antidepressant brought a tragically early end to Dandridge's life; she was 42.
1958, 98 mins.
Starring : Dorothy Dandridge, Curd Jürgens, Alex Cressan
Director : John Berry
The Cunard Yanks & GI Babes
Thursday 2nd November, The Cube, 8pm, £3/4
Speaker Dave Cotterill.
Bristol premiere of a Cunard Yanks already shown in Liverpool and New York to popular aclaim. In the early 1950s young, white, Liverpool seamen who worked the Cunard Line, were sailing to New York. Although they did not know it at the time, they were to collide with the explosion of a new cultural scene in the U.S.A. This was the great migration of Afro-Americans to the northern states and the cities of Chicago, Detroit and New York which had brought new music, dance and fashion to the streets. One of the reoccurring themes of this History Week is the importance of the ship as conduit for information via the crew 'below decks'. Thus a small group of cooks, pantry-men and waiters who were later to be nick-named "The Cunard Yanks" would act as this conduit and consequently change the cultural history of Liverpool.
2005, 30 mins.
Produced By : Available Light
Speaker Dave Parker.
GI Babes is a programme made for the BBC directed by James Macalpine. GI Babes is the story of the black American soldiers based in the West Country in WW2 and the children born to the white women they met. Rachel is a mixed race American in search of her father who was for a time billeted in Bristol. The story of her search is also the story of the Black GI's and their experiences in the West of England during the war.
2005, 30 mins.
Produced By : Available Light
Treasure Island
Saturday 4th November, The Cube, 1:30pm, £3/4
Disney's adaptation of Robert Louis Stephenson's classic tale. Newton, in splendid form, arguably gives the best big screen characterisation of literature's most famous unidexter. Join such legends as Ben Gunn, Israel Hands, Jim Hawkins and Blind Pew in this ripping yarn.
1950, 96 mins
Starring : Robert Newton, Bobbie Driscoll
Directed by : Byron Haskin
Burn!
Saturday 4th November, The Cube, 11pm, £3/4
Introduced by Christina Heatherton.
Pontecorvo's memorable sequel to Battle of Algiers sees Brando in finely ambiguous form as the drunken, cynical Sir William Walker, a British agent sent to the Caribbean island of Queimada in the mid-1800s to stir up a native rebellion against the Portuguese sugar monopoly; ten years later, he is forced to return there to destroy the leader he himself created, in order to open up trade with Britain. Falling between epic adventure and political allegory, the film is occasionally clumsily structured and poorly focused; but Pontecorvo, working from a script by Franco Solinas, provides a sharp, provocative analysis of colonialism, full of telling irony, bravura set pieces, and compelling imagery, while Brando's stiff-lipped performance, emphasising his character's confused mixture of dignity and deceit, intelligence and evil, determination and disillusion, never allows the allegory to dominate the human content. A flawed but fascinating film. (TimeOut)
1969, 115 mins
Starring : Marlon Brando
Directed by : Gillo Pontecorvo
Hanging At Kenn & Bristol At War
Sunday 5th November, The Cube, 8pm, £3/4
Introduced by Steve Poole
The Hanging At Kenn tells of historian Steve Poole's quest for the reasons behind Britain's last public hanging to be carried out at the "scene of the crime". It happened at Kenn in North Somerset in the early 1830's. A bitter tale of the power of law and order in pre-Victorian Britain. The film will be followed by a question and answer session with Steve Poole.
Not in World War II but Bristol in the English Civil War (Revolution). Bristol At War follows Professor Ronald Hutton's search to discover why the second city in the country fell twice during the Civil War, first to the Royalists and then to the Parliamentarians.
Both films are from The History Trail TV series produced by available light.
The Liberty Tree - The Life, Times & Writings of Tom Paine
Saturday 28th October, The Cube, 8pm, £6
Leon Rosselson and Robb Johnson perform a musical event interspersed with contemporary songs that reflect Paine's ideas. These were influenced by the American War of Independence and were influential on the French Revolution.
Surfin' Turnips
Wednesday 1st November, The Junction,8pm(ish), £1
The Surfin' Turnips will bring a shredding ramonewurzel pirate punk to the outcasts of the nations of the earth in Bristol Radical History Week, bring your prize veg. The Surfin' Turnips also played on Sunday 4th November.
Can't Y'Dance The Polka?
Saturday 4th November, The Cube, 8pm, £6
Sea Shanties from The Harry Browns and Gunner's Mate followed by the film Burn! staring Marlon Brando.
The Turnips Unplugged
Sunday 4th November, The Seven Stars, 3pm
The Surfin' Turnips played a raw and acoustic set as a treat for Sunday afternoon. The Surfin' Turnips played a fully amplified gig on Wednesday 1st November.
At The Spy Glass
An exhibition opening on Sunday 29th October including prints of the 1831 uprising, images from slave rebellions, photographs from the 1987 uprising in St. Pauls and an actual cell door (complete with prisoner's graffiti) from the Bristol city jail (cira 1840).
The Exhibition includes A Luta Continua (The Struggle Continues) by Bandele Iyapo (artist and "trouble maker"). This consists of works in a variety of media including a collection of montages critiquing the inability of Bristol's establishment, both business and civic, to come to terms with the city's role in the slave trade. Bandele's thought provoking work ruffles feathers and challenges misconceptions such as: "there where no slaves in Bristol" and "there is a bridge in Bristol that is a monument to slaves".
The exhibition will ran until Sunday 5th November.
Bristol Central Library
For the whole week there was a display of historic radical journals from Bristol such as Coleridge's Journal The Watchman and the original Bristolian.
There was also be a special viewing, conducted by Jane Bradley the Local Studies Librarian, of the Bristol Room which contains among other things Judge Jeffreys' (the 'Hanging Judge') chair - 2pm on Monday 30th October. The Bristol Room is designed as a memorial to the old library in King Street. It contains the original bookcases and fireplace surround from that building. The library was founded in 1613 as a free library for the citizens of Bristol and also shared premises for some time with the Bristol Library Society, of which the poets Southey and Coleridge were members.
At The Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery
11:30am - 12:30pm Friday 3rd November, in the Conference Room.
Generously, Bristol Museum allowed a special viewing of a series of paintings, water colours and engravings depicting the 1831 Queens Square uprisings and their aftermath. Artists such as William James Müller (1812-1845) and J. B. Pyne were present at the events and recorded them for your viewing pleasure. Sheena Stoddard the Curator of Fine Art and an expert on Bristol painters also gave a talk about the paintings.
A Riot Of Colour
Saturday 4th November, The Cube, 11am-1pm, Free
Nanoplex brings you a workshop extraordinaire! Children (5+) are invited to interact with works of art and connect to historical events from Bristol's past. Using b/w copies of sketches by Bristol colourist W.J.Muller (1812-45) of the 1831 Bristol riots, the children will help bring to life segments that will be filmed/animated and put together to make up the original like a giant multicolored jigsaw.
.The workshop will be followed by a screening of Treasure Island at 1:30pm.
Pirate Walk With Pete The Pirate
Sunday 5th November, Meet outside @Bristol, 2pm, £3.50 Adults, £2.50 Children, £8 Family (2 Adults + 2 Children)
Discovering Bristol's turbulent history at the harbour side haunts of the 17th and 18th century pirates and swashbucklers. Fun, interesting and educational. Pete The Pirate leads his walks every Saturday and Sunday. See http://pages.prodigy.net/rodney.broome/frpiratewalksall.htm for more details.
The New Model Army's Relief of Bristol
Sunday 5th November, St. Werburghs City Farm, 12 noon Breakfast, Walk Starts 1.00pm - 3.00pm, The Walk Is Free, Breakfast Is Not
History Walk from St Werburghs City Farm to the centre of Bristol focusing on The New Model Army's relief of Bristol in 1645 Meet at 12noon at the St. Werburghs City Farm Cafe for breakfast (to cure hangovers from the Sea Shanty night at the Cube). Leaving at 1.00pm, Jim McNeill, local historian, storyteller and member of Living Easton, retraced the steps of the New Model Army's relief of Bristol in 1645. We found out why Cromwell Hill is so named, why the Royalist Prince Rupert cared more about his pet dogs than the starving people of Bristol and why the City father's still haven't come to terms with Cromwell's victory, plus much more about the social and political history of Bristol.
