Cheerleaders for parliamentary democracy often hark back semi-legendary ‘golden ages’ as a foundation of the modern electoral process. Do these myths have any basis in reality and what relevance do they have today? Dan Bennett uncovers the hidden history of Athenian popular democracy and proposes a modern alternative. Watch this talk: If you see this text the video has failed to play. Please let us know by emailing brh@brh.org.uk.
Proponents of parliamentary democracy often hark back semi-legendary ‘golden ages’ as a foundation of universal enfranchisement. Do these myths have any basis in reality and what relevance do they have today? Dan Bennett and Tony Dyer follow a historical path from ancient Athens via Anglo-Saxon participatory democracy through to the French Revolution. Dave Cullum poses the question, is representative democracy necessary for modern capitalism to exist? Every Cook Can Govern Daniel Bennett's talk […]
Avengers & Madmen - Propagandists Of The Deed & The Dawn Of Modern Terrorism - Matt Carr The author of the controversial (and banned) history of terrorism, The Infernal Machine, looks at the anarchist assassins of the late 19th century. Carr considers how such attacks were perceived by their protagonists and spectators, and how the heroic template that they developed has been reproduced in various other contexts. Author of The Infernal Machine – A History of Terrorism*, the first edition […]
As a tasty hors d'oeuvre to Bristol Radical History Week 2008 we are extremely pleased to present Lucio Urtubia, anarchist, bank robber, forger, fugitive and above all bricklayer. Lucio’s life is the stuff of legend. As an activist in 1950s Paris he counted André Breton and Albert Camus amongst his friends, worked with anarchist guerrilla Francisco Sabate in attempting to bring down Franco’s fascist regime and carried out numerous bank robberies to fund the struggle to free Spain. In 1977, after […]
Italian Anarchist, Galleanists, Latvian revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, communists, NAACP, Irish cops and gangsters thrown together into a mix with immigration, racism, corruption, strikes, riot and class warfare as a city goes into meltdown leading up to the Boston police strike of 1919. Two main characters are Danny Coughlin, Irish and son of one of Boston’s most powerful police captains and Luther Lawrence, poor and black, and on the run from racism and the mob. While Danny wrestles with his […]
Firstly some firsts. Bristol M.P. Edmund Burke was the author of what was perhaps the first anarchist tract; Westcountryman Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt first pioneered the use of the mass platform for ‘rabblerousing’ against the establishment; Bristol was the home of the first avowedly atheistic journal. This is a survey of home-grown anarchism, with its roots in a tradition of West Country radicalism. By the end of the Nineteenth Century explicitly anarchist sensibilities had already emerged as […]
