Blog - Bristol Radical History Group

Slavery Wealth and the Beginnings of Bristol’s Diocesan Board of Education

By Randell Brantley

Following the money generated from slavery, transferred and transmuted into UK spending, is usually difficult. Yet sometimes unmistakable glimpses appear. When they do, where the money goes can sometimes be surprising. Almost 80 years ago, Eric Williams’s claim that wealth from slavery helped fund Britain’s industrial revolution was considered controversial. Today it is widely accepted, and now the debate is more about estimating how significant was the extent. Slavery wealth is also known to […]

Hilda Cashmore plaque unveiling

By Randell Brantley

The unveiling of a blue plaque to Hilda Cashmore, the first warden of Bristol's Barton Hill Settlement, took place at noon on 8 March, 2023 (International Women's Day). A Quaker, feminist, social reformer and educator, whose work led to her election as the first woman president of the British Association of Residential Settlements, Cashmore was one of a number of influential women social reformers in early twentieth-century Bristol. After the unveiling, Helen Meller, author of the BRHG book […]

Steve Philbey

By Roger

Many years ago, stuck in a traffic jam on the Bath Road bridge, I looked up to see a series of massive slogans expertly pasted onto the advertising hoardings on the billboards. The first on an insurance company advert said: WHO IS SPARTACUS? The second said: ARE YOU SPARTACUS? The third over a group of 'Kwik Fit Fitters' said: WE ARE SPARTACUS And finally the last in the row... YOU ARE SPARTACUS This was one of my first introductions to the work of the Saint Just Mob, artists and subvertisers […]

Feminist, Socialist, Pacifist – Mabel Tothill Place

By Randell Brantley

Hurray! Bristol has a new road named Mabel Tothill Place in the Barton Hill area. This is great news as it is well deserved and highlights a local activist who did so much for the area. There are remarkably few roads named after women anywhere in the country. Mabel Tothill who lived from 1869 to 1964 was a peace campaigner, a Quaker, a socialist and Bristol's first woman councillor (for Easton ward). She was a committed social activist who was part of campaigns and organizations that worked to […]

Callout for feedback on our 4th Bristol Radical History Festival

By Tim

How time flies in the midst of the multiple global crisis of capitalism! A week ago our 4th Bristol Radical History Festival was just beginning, and we at BRHG were pretty pleased with how it all went, especially as we put it on at fairly short notice after the event was postponed due to covid in 2020 and 2021. A big thank you to all the excellent speakers, to the radical history walk guides, the stallholders who came from near and far, the singing of Red Notes socialist choir, and the films we […]

You are invited: to the 4th Bristol Radical History Festival on 14th May

By Tim

We are delighted to welcome people back to M Shed this Saturday, 14th May, for our 4th Bristol Radical History Festival. It's been a frustrating two years of delays and postponements due to covid since this was first planned, but now all systems are go! All are welcome - this is a free event, you do not need to buy a ticket. Here's the Directions to M Shed. We have organised a full programme of events for our 2022 Radical History Festival, in collaboration with our hosts at M Shed. The Festival […]

Radical Empathy: Voices of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women

By Rosie Wild

In April 1986 a group of women in Bristol who considered themselves both feminists and survivors of psychiatric treatment came together to found the Bristol Crisis Service for Women (BCSW). Organised as a collective and with scant funding, the group drew on the feminist practice of consciousness raising to develop its work. It also took inspiration from the contemporaneous Survivor Movement, that rejected the medical model of mental illness, condemned the barbarity of much psychiatric […]

Downs row – Merchants hit back over criticism

By Randell Brantley

In a report in the Bristol Post of Wednesday 26 January 2022, the Society of Merchant Venturers [SMVs] hit back at critics who want them to give up their half of the Downs and their role in managing the public common. The article, Downs row – Merchants hit back over criticism, was based upon the outcome of a meeting of the Downs Committee that was held on Monday 24th Jan, where campaigners in the ‘Downs for People’ [DfP] pressure group, backed by a Green councillor, demanded that the ancient […]

Congratulations Barbados

Ripples across the Pond

By Rosemary Caldicott

On Tuesday 30 November 2021, marking the 55th anniversary of independence from Britain, Barbados proudly became a Republic. In 2020 the then governor-general of Barbados, Sandra Mason, now president and head of state, stated that "the time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind. Barbadians want a Barbadian head of state." The former Barbadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom Guy Hewitt, stated in an interview that many Barbadians believe that the country was due for "a […]

Deliberately Maintaining the Silence on Slavery History

By Randell Brantley

Calls for ‘an international memorial to the victims of enslavement’[1] sound reasonable, but my own experience this year uncovered a strong tendency to keep slavery history hidden. I was ambivalent last year when Colston was toppled. Of course, black lives matter, but so does history. I was apprehensive about other groups damaging historical objects. The protest, however, set me thinking, recognising my limited understanding, and eventually investigating slavery issues. Last year, I began to […]