Catch Bristol’s wonderful Red Notes Choir, who will support the Bristol Radical History Festival by performing at 11:30am. They’ll be singing in the Ground Floor Foyer by the M Shed main entrance. The Red Notes Choir is a Bristol-based socialist choir. They have a repertoire of songs from around the world on historical, union, peace, green and human rights themes. We use the streets of Bristol and further afield to spread our message of fighting for the rights of working people, those who are […]
In the last few weeks, people have been looking back to the 1984/5 miners’ strike, and celebrating the tremendous solidarity shown by National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) members to sustain their fight to protect jobs and communities. The strike provoked a wave of solidarity from people across the UK that helped to sustain the striking miners. It also had an impact on levels of political organisation more generally. Many younger activists became more confident and developed organisational skills […]
The photos in this display were taken by young people attending a work training scheme called Stop Gap in the early 1980s in North Paddington in London. Most of the the black and white photos were taken by trainees while being supervised by one of the Stop Gap workers, Nicola Blakeney. Some were then developed by the tainees while being supervised Philip Wolmuth in the North Paddington Community Darkroom. The subjects of the photos will now be in their fifties. More details about Stop Gap are […]
To celebrate Mayday and three new Bristol Radical History Group publications focusing on the vibrant labour history of Bristol we are bringing the authors together at Tony Benn House for an early evening event. Deference and Dissent: Labour relations in a family firm by Mike Richardson is a study of the printing and publishing company J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd from 1855 to 1927, providing a window into the working lives of compositors, letterpress machinists, and bookbinders and their relationships […]
This multimedia display allows visitors to hear the voices of current and former staff and volunteers of groundbreaking feminist mental health service, the Bristol Crisis Service for Women. Now known as Self Injury Support, this pioneering group was started in the back of a charity shop in Easton as a feminist collective in 1986. Its goals were to listen to, support, and amplify the voices of women using self injury to cope with their experience of trauma. In 2022, as part of an oral history […]
In recent years, Bristol Radical History Group and the Remembering the Real World War 1 group (RRWW1) have been working with teachers in Bristol on resource material about resistance to World War 1 and, lately, workhouses. This session will set out what has been achieved so far and invite debate about what we, and others involved in education, can do in the future to introduce radical histories, histories ‘from below’ and 'hidden histories' to young people.
Squatting is central to Bristol's history. For the last 50 years Stokes Croft and the neigbourhoods that surround it have been one of the city's most squatted areas. This short walking tour includes a selection of buildings squatted in and around Stokes Croft and St Pauls in the 1970s, 1980s, 2000s and 2010s. The buildings were used by a variety of people and groups for housing, political organising, art, music and as social centres. Join us to look back at what Bristol owes to squatting, […]
From the website: "The South Gloucestershire Mines Research Group (SGMRG) was set up by local people to understand, record and, where appropriate, preserve the remains of what was once an extensive industry for the present community and future generations. SGMRG is a voluntary organisation that relies on grants and donations from local people. Our membership is made up of archaeologists, surveyors, historians, engineers, cavers and those simply interested in finding more about what lies under […]
