Book Review: Dazza Scott, Sabotage: The Story of the Hunt Saboteurs Association (Hunt Saboteurs Association, 2021). In 2023 the Hunt Saboteurs Association will mark its 60th anniversary. Sabotage shows that it has plenty to celebrate. For all the horrors, joys, tears, and moments of farce brought to life in this book, the hold of bloodsports is much diminished since the organisation was founded in 1963. There is a long tradition of opposition to fox hunting and other cruel sports, an expression […]
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 […]
Not A BRHG Event
A Night of Solidarity with Myanmar takes place at The Cube on 2nd March from 7.30pm - get tickets here. Early arrivals will enjoy some 'Myanmar snacks' cooked up by members of the Myanmar community in Bristol. Hosted by the local #WithMyanmar support group on FB, it's aim is to spread awareness, information & understanding of the current situation in Myanmar (aka Burma), and generate support for it's people resisting the Military Coup there on 1st February 2021. That Military Coup followed […]
Not In An Event Series
Were you ever involved in Bristol's squatters' movement? Join us on Sunday 6th March 2-4pm at BASE (14 Robertson Road, Easton) for tea, cake and a chat around a map to capture memories of squatting in Bristol. So much of what we love about Bristol was made possible by squatting. Bristol Squatted is a new project aiming to give squatting the space it deserves in the city's history and ask what the role is for squatting in Bristol today. For more information see here and bristolsquatted.org
Not A BRHG Event
The second Bristol Radical Bookfair, postponed from last December, takes place at the Exchange venue on Sunday 20 February, from 11.30am to 3.30pm. All are welcome at this event, presented by Active Distro, and featuring stalls with new and second hand titles from radical publishers, zine makers and activists, in addition to stalls from local campaigns groups. It's still cold and dark outside, stock up with some good stuff to read! See the FB event for more info. This is a great opportunity to […]
Bristol-born politician and intuitive creative artist Cleo Lake is driven by the idea of utilising creativity, dance and expanded performance to aid civic engagement and to reframe storytelling as a resilience tool to embed cultural knowledge, empathy, understanding and cohesion. Cleo is currently working on the collaborative ‘Citizens Researching Together’ programme on the strand: Decolonising Memory – Digital Bodies in Movement. Book tickets here.
Not A BRHG Event
This free event at 12.00 - 4.00pm at the The Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street (BS2 0EJ) is a gathering of radical publishers, zine makers, activists, artists and local campaign groups organised by the now Bristol based Active Distribution. BRHG will have a bookstall at the event with all our publications and more. More details here.
Introduction During the furore about the renaming of the Colston Hall in 2017 a number of angry letter-writers to the Bristol Post claimed that the recent protests over Edward Colston were merely a ‘flash in the pan’ and a product of ‘woke’, faddist politics propagated by people from outside Bristol. This attempt to reduce the actions of groups and movements like Countering Colston and Black Lives Matter to a particular historical moment whilst the great weight of a supposed ‘tradition’, such as […]
“State snooping has increased, is increasing and ought to be decreased.” So argue Colin Thomas and Tim Beasley in the fifty-first pamphlet produced by the Bristol Radical History Group. It begins with the way that the government of Elizabeth 1 planted double agents amongst dissident Catholic groups and then traces how this infiltration continued through the centuries, targeting Luddites, Chartists, Irish nationalists, trade unionists, war protestors and climate campaigners. The booklet […]
