Saturday 5 November – 11.00am startSt. Mary’s Institute, Stow Hill, NP20 1JJ

A Newport surgeon (Roger Morgan, re-enactor) will report on the injuries sustained in Newport on the morning of November 4th, 1839 and demonstrate how the wounded were treated.

And there will be ‘time travelling’ lecturers with ‘magic lantern slides’:

Karin Molson, on behalf of Shire Hall ‘Campaign’ Project, will show DVDs made with young people involved in ’active citizenshi’ that has been inspired by the Chartist Story.

Colin Gibson (archivist) on the survival and importance of Chartist Trial documents that Gwent Archives have been digitising during 2011.

Ruth Waycott and Les James, authors of a new book – Voices for the Vote: Chartism in south Wales - about the struggles of the Chartists to gain free speech and political rights for all.

Soup, rolls, coffee, tea available at good prices.

The Convention has no dealings with Truck or Tommy (Company) shops.

2.00pm at Newport Museum and Art Gallery

- The South Wales Record Society is launching its latest volume, William Downing Evans (1811-97): Poetry and Poverty in Nineteenth-Century Newport. Authors, Ian and Wendy Dear, will be talking about this Newport man who lived through the Chartist era and was local Registrar and Clerk to the Poor Law Guardians for half a century and strove to improve the town’s sanitation.

Details of this and other Newport events can found on their flyer.

Organised by White Horse Trades Union Council on 6th November 2010 at St. Margaret’s Hall Bradford-on-Avon from 10am.

Talk subjects include Chartists and Swing rebellions in  Wiltshire as well as strikes in Swindon.

You can find more details about this event on Socialist Unity where you can read blogger Andy Newman’s assertion that BRHG take “a fundamentally anti-working class and anti-trade union approach” (comment 27). He goes on to say: “there is a smart alec, middle class, know-all-ism about these so called ‘radicals’.” He also calls BRHG “smart arse anarchist”. (comment 49)… gosh.

Despite the fact that Andy might be there it should be a fascinating and informative event.

Saturday 2nd October 2pm-5pm

Sir Thomas Richs School Longlevens

A fair days wage for a fair days work- workers movements in Gloucestershire

Talks include:

• Work wages and protest in Gloucestershire 1738-1830 by Prof Adrian Randall
• Swing   riots in Gloucestershire
• Chartists and the Chartist Land Company in Glocestershire by Rev John Evans

Cost £5 including tea&  biscuits

As well as the Morris Beckman event at The Cube on 1st March 2010 Bristol Radical History Group are planning a series of events for April around the theme of the inevitable General Election:

Bristol Radical History Group Election Special

The Struggle for Democracy in Britain

Recent British histories arrogantly claimed that the ‘we’ brought democracy to the Empire and ultimately the world in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Despite centuries of struggle to wrestle power from an elite few, the vote in Britain is still seen as a gift from the rulers to the people to help bring ‘us’ into the modern age. These days, the establishment of western style ‘democracy’ is used by Britain as a context for invasion, war and occupation.

In April this year through the media of public lectures, debates, history walks and other events, Bristol Radical History Group will be critically examining the British history of democracy and enfranchisement. Tracing a path from the English and French Revolutions via the Spencerites, the Chartists and the Suffragettes to New Labour we will be trying to answer the following questions:

• How was the vote for everybody achieved?
• Who wanted democracy and who didn’t?
• What was the composition of the movements that fought for the vote for all?
• What did these movements actually want?
• What were the alternatives?
• What did we end up with?
• Is democracy historically necessary for capitalism to exist?
• Does ‘democracy’, as we know it, have a future?

Join us in uncovering the hidden history of democracy and enfranchisement in Britain. A perfect antidote to the misery of ‘election fever’.