Activism Archives - Page 6 of 13 Bristol Radical History Group

Mapping Squatting Memories

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

Bristol Radical Bookfair

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 […]

Movement in the movement

Dance as a necessary tool for radical change

Poster with the words Behind the screen on one side of a screen, and an abstract audience on the other side

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.

The 1970s Counterculture in the West Country

The story of the Bath Arts Workshop

Front cover of Bath Arts Workshop: Counterculture in the 1970s with people in fancy dress in front of shop in Walcot Street, Bath

From the late 1960s through the 1970s the counterculture helped to make the West Country fizz with creative ideas and events. One of the most successful ventures, locally and nationally, was the Bath Arts Workshop. As a spin-off from London’s influential Arts Lab, BAT was a loose collective of artists and community activists. To describe it as a community arts group, however, would be to under-explain its work. It was that and much more as it proliferated into festival organisation, media […]

Bristol Radical Bookfair

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.

De-Convicted

The convicts who got a second chance

By Colin Thomas

This pamphlet analyses British penology by focussing on three case studies, spread across two centuries, all with Bristol connections. Francis Greenway, originally sentenced to death for forgery in Bristol, was transported to Australia where he became the colony’s leading architect; Douglas Curtis, who moved on from Cotham Grammar School to specialising in the theft of luxury yachts, eventually graduated from Cambridge University but didn’t forget the interests of those who were once his fellow […]

Edward Colston: A century of dissent and protest

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 […]

Webinar – Pamphlet Launch – State Snooping: Spooks, Cops and Double Agents

“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 […]

State Snooping: Spooks, Cops and Double Agents

By Tim

State Snooping front Covers. I man's face split in two, ha;f copper, half crusty activist.

Elizabeth I claimed that she had “no desire to open windows into men’s souls” while seeking to do just that. This pamphlet traces the way British governments have been snooping into the lives of its citizens ever since, culminating in the recent insidious Spy Cops Bill. State Snooping: Spooks, Cops and Double Agents, is the 51st in our series of BRHG pamphlets. It's the latest by one of our regular authors Colin Thomas. You can buy the pamphlet here for £3.00 inc p&p. State Snooping provides […]

State Snooping

Spooks, Cops and Double Agents

By Colin Thomas

In the 1550s Elizabeth I claimed that she had “no desire to open windows into men’s souls” while seeking to do just that. This pamphlet traces a near 500 year history of British governments snooping into the lives of its citizens. From the anti-Catholic paranoia of the sixteenth century to the effect of the radical ideas underlying the French Revolution of the eighteenth, the state increasingly expanded its surveillance activities. Industrialisation in the nineteenth century gave birth to mass […]