Commons, Customary Rights & Enclosures Archives - Bristol Radical History Group

We must begin with the land

Seeking abundance and liberation through social ecology

Food is glorious. Food is glorious, but it is also increasingly precarious. This may not make headlines, but we all need to care. Office for National Statistics figures suggest that domestic food inflation has seen prices rise by more than a third since 2020. This is currently leading to a proliferation of food banks, unimaginable only a few years ago. Shockingly, world hunger has increased during the past decade, according to the United Nations. The reasons for this situation are complex but […]

Warren James Day 8 June

This year we are marking WARREN JAMES DAY, with poems, songs, short stories, and performances that explore the people and events – real and imagined – of the 1831 ‘Dean Forest Riots’ (uprising!), its aftermath and ongoing legacy. Parkend Working Men’s Club, Lion Row, Parkend, GL154JZ. FREE event. 2-5pm Warren James is a Forest folk hero who led a rebellion against the authorities in 1831 to pull down enclosures stopping people getting access to the forest – a key part of their livelihood. For […]

Blowing up the Fire Engine Colliery

By Ian Wright

Acts of Resistance

A musical radical history with Steve Lake (Zounds)

What could be more up the Bristol Radical History Group’s street than to time-travel through radical history with Acts of Resistance? We’re therefore overjoyed to dress up and get down to this new Avant-Folk Punk-Opera. Acts of Resistance features a redoubtable trio made up of Steve Lake (self-described “chief show off” with legendary anarcho-punk band Zounds, first appearing on Crass Records and nexus for all kinds of musical troublemakers), Bristolian Emo-folkster Aether Valentine, and Carl […]

Warren James Day

Bristol Allotmenteers Resist! campaign as the eternal struggle for land continues

By Tim

Image consists of small pictures of veg, plants and seedlings. Plus the text Bristol Allotmenteers Resist and brief explainer of the campaign, plus important links for people to check out. THese are in the article below too.

On a wet and windy night on the 4th January 2024, upto 200 people attended the first Bristol Allotmenteers Resist! public campaign meeting, at St Werburgh's community centre. By 7.05pm it was standing room only. By 7.20pm I was up at the front, with old pal Mike Feingold, the respected local food grower and permaculture teacher. We had 10 minutes max between us, and Mike was going to talk on his 30yrs of allotment experience in Bristol. We'd agreed that I would, quite literally, do '1000 years […]

From Pirates to Proletarians

The Experience of the Pilots and Watermen of Crockerne Pill in the Nineteenth Century

Wednesday 17 January - 3.00-4.00pm - Portishead Senior Forum, Folkhouse, High Street, Portishead BS20 6PR Mike Richardson charts the experiences, in the nineteenth century, of Bristol’s pilots, and their assistants, in their struggle to defend their jobs and their traditional way of working, particularly as steam power emerged to replace sail. Their relationship with the shipowners, masters and city authorities was a complex one, and broke down periodically into open conflict. They lived almost […]

Pirates to Proletarians: The Experience of the Pilots and Watermen of Crockerne Pill in the 19th Century

Venue: Pill Library and Children's Centre, Crockerne House, Underbanks, Pill BS20 0AT From the earliest days of recorded history river pilots have navigated ships through the dangerous waters of the Bristol Channel and up the river Avon, with its twisting bends, shifting sand banks and strong currents. In the early nineteenth century, Bristol was granted rights to compulsory pilotage over the whole of the Channel. Mike charts the experiences, in the nineteenth century, of Bristol’s pilots, and […]

The Fight for Monad

By Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams’s novel, The Fight for Manod was first published in 1979. As we know, 1979 was an important year, seemingly a watershed year. In this year Margaret Thatcher was elected, and Ronald Regan launched what was to be his successful presidential campaign. Yet the social forces that pushed them into prominence and the form of capitalism on stilts now commonly known as Neoliberalism didn’t of course suddenly emerge overnight from nowhere. Like deadly toadstools, the mycelium that brought […]

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 […]