Articles: Written Articles

Here you will find articles by our contributors. To filter the articles by ‘type’ use the menu below. Articles, as well as most of the content on this site, are also grouped by Subjects, Tags (keywords) and Projects.

Theresa Garnette Vrs. Winston Churchill

By Anny Cullum The campaign for female suffrage began in 1865 with the introduction of the first private members bill for an amendment for female enfranchisement. Suffrage groups first campaigned democratically and using constitutional means, lobbying, petitioning etc and won some small victories in terms of women becoming more involved in public life; sitting on school boards and becoming poor law guardians. However, nearly 40 years later women were still disenfranchised and in 1903 a group […]

Tolpuddle and Swing: The Flea and the Elephant

‘One and all, one and all, we’ll stand by one another’ Chant of a Sussex Swing mob (1830) ‘We will destroy the constables and threshing machines this year, next year we will have a turn with the parsons, and the third we will make war upon the statesmen’ Kent Swing activist (1830) Introduction In February this year a couple of members of Bristol Radical History Group travelled to Salisbury Guild Hall to witness the unveiling of a Trade Union plaque to commemorate the people who had passed […]

Nettle Beer

Bottles filled, labelled and ready to go.
Or How To Brew a Different Social Relationship Based on Commoning Rather Than Alienation (including a br ief exploration of 800 years of history including both the use of Structural Adjustment Policies by the IMF and of the use of sugar in making alcohol) Until recently I had no experience of brewing beer, but I did have a interesting revelation / discovery courtesy of Peter Linebaugh, the US based radical historian. The revelation occurred during an event organised by Bristol Radical History […]

A poem about Charles Bishop’s quest to re-open a right of way through St Anne’s Wood in 1884.

By Julie Boston Bristol 1884 CHARLES BISHOP BATTLED ON Bristol 1884 'Who's that walking through my woods? Who's that fishing In my stream? Who's that drinking from my well? Who's that trampling on my dream? 'Last month I bought St Anne's Estate – The woods, the ferry and the Well – Put a lock on every gate Trespassers can go to Hell. How dear little Angelina dotes On her piebald pony and pedigree goats' James Sinnott, the villain of this tale, thought his plan couldn't fail if the ferryboat […]

English Abolition: The Movie

Amazing Grace a film directed by Michael Apted First Published In The New York Review Of Books Volume 52, Number 10, June 14, 2007. Reproduced by kind permission of the author. Two hundred years ago this spring, Britain ended its Atlantic slave trade, an event of immense importance, because the country then dominated the traffic in human beings. From the mid-1700s on, roughly half the captive Africans taken to the Americas had been transported in British ships. Ever since, Parliament's vote to […]

Seven Stars, Slavery and Freedom!

The frontispiece from Clarksons essay.
The Seven Stars pub in St Thomas Lane (next to the Fleece and Firkin) is without doubt a remarkable pub. It has survived the Blitz, post and pre war planners, new roads (such as Victoria Street) and all of the brewery ‘re-organisations’ and changes in fashion. It even lost the community that surrounded it, but it’s still there, a beacon on our past. The reason its survival is so important is due to one man, Thomas Clarkson, and if it wasn’t for Bristol Civic Society nobody would have been aware […]

A Celebration of St. Wulfstan

In between the howling gales, we had a day of calm which coincided with a spur of the moment event; 'A Celebration of St Wulfstan', on his saints day, the 19th of January. After a brief rendition of his life was published in last months magazine, a number of people got together to try and celebrate the great man's life, in the actual church in which he served, as a contribution to Abolition 200 year. Several people had stated that we ought to do something, and contact was made through the […]

Pin It on Pinterest