Democracy & Suffrage Archives - Page 6 of 7 Bristol Radical History Group

Working Class Bookfair

Talks by BRHG stalwarts contributed to The Working Class Bookfair Where Now For The Left? - Ian Bone Ian Bone, Class Warrior, Ciaran Walsh IWW (involved in Traveller education), plus one other speaker (tbc). It has become common place to patronise working class people, whether those who tell us that we don't exist or the condescending description of us as 'chavs' etc. and 'dole scum'. We are working class and we are proud of it. The British working class is the oldest in the world created in the […]

Who The Hell Is Thomas Paine?

On the 200th anniversary of Paine’s death, Peter Clark explains the contemporary importance of his writings that were so influential in the revolutionary ferment of the late 18th Century. Paine redefined the nature of political discourse with his ground-breaking views on human rights, democracy, the open society, racial equality, women's rights and the welfare state. Clark questions why this great British thinker is fêted in France and the United States yet remains a prophet without fortune in […]

Spectres Of Violence

Thomas Paine, George Cruikshank And The Age Of Reason

The aim of this talk is to take a fresh look at the image of Britain’s first Public Enemy Number One: Thomas Paine. From the 1790s onwards, Paine’s political and religious writings symbolized everything that the British establishment feared about radical ideas and the rise of the ‘common’ reader. Paine ensured his terrorist credentials with the publication of the Rights of Man (1791-2), but this talk will focus on his other massively subversive book, Age of Reason (1795), a study in ‘infidel’ […]

Author’s Choice: Peter Linebaugh

Magna Carta And The Commons Magna Carta And The Commons. Or, How Bad King John Pretended to Launch a Crusade against Islam in order to better Conceal his Robbery of the People's Hydrocarbon Energy Resources which at the time (1215-17) took the form of Woodlands; and, Whether the Hydrocarbon Energy Resources which in our day (2006) take the form of Petroleum can be Restored to the "communa tocius terre," or not. We may propose three methods of interpreting Magna Carta: in a word, the legal, the […]

1831 Uprising Commermoration

Celebrate the popular revolt that shocked the British ruling classes into democratic reform. Join the 'mob' waving flaming brands and listen to fiery speeches as we remember the hundreds of Bristol rebels who changed the course of history. Dress : Bawdy Attitude : Raucous

Insurrectionary Bristol: 1831

Britain in 1831… a tinder box? The Reform Act and suffrage The events of October in Bristol The trials and punishments Was it chaos, protest or class war? The wider political implications Why we should commemorate 1831 Listent to this talk: Downlaod to this talk (1.5 Mb mp3 file)

The People’s Farm

English Radical Agrarianism 1775-1840

By Malcolm Chase

This book traces the development of agrarian ideas from the 1770s through to Chartism, and seeks to explain why, in an era of industrialization and urban growth, land remained one of the major issues in popular politics. Malcolm Chase considers the relationship between ‘land consciousness’ and early socialism; attempts to create alternative communities; and contemporary perceptions of nature and the environment. He concludes that, far from being an anachronistic, utopian, and reactionary […]

Anglo-Saxon Democracy

By Tony Dyer

Contrary to popular belief, the end of Roman rule in Britain did not see ethnic cleansing and the genocide of the native "Celtic" population by invading Anglo- Saxons. Instead it saw the end of a period of imperialistic colonial rule and a return to a native tradition where justice and common land rights were maintained by the community for the community. As a result one of the most creative and prosperous societies in Europe was established. This native tradition was, however, to be fatally […]

Votes For Ladies

The Suffrage Movement 1867 - 1918

The Suffragettes are widely seen as the pinnacle of Women’s radical action in the early Twentieth Century. However, beyond the passion and drive of such unladylike militancy, were the organisation and aims of this movement as radical as the means used to try to obtain it? Were the Suffragettes alone in the struggle for female emancipation? And how far can the granting of limited female suffrage in 1918 be attributed to the exploits of these women? This pamphlet analyses this iconic 'women's' […]