Modern History (Post World War II) Archives - Page 16 of 18 Bristol Radical History Group

Sir! No Sir!

Roger introduces the film Sir! No Sir! shown by Bristol Indymedia at the Cube Cinema Bristol. The talk discusses the ways in which the Vietnam War was resisted internally and the impact that has had since on warfare in general. link to the films website.Bristol Radical History Group: 2006 Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) have organised a bewildering range of history events; staging walks, talks, gigs, reconstructions, films, exhibitions, trips through the archives and fireside story telling. […]

Hands off our forest – saving the Forest of Dean

Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Radical History Zone 2011 Poster

We have just seen a massive U turn by this government as a result of huge ground swell of public opinion against the proposed sell off of the Forestry Commission Estate. In the autumn of 2010, the campaign kicked off in the Forest of Dean with a huge public meeting in Cinderford which was attended by over 500 people and a rally in Speech House attended by 3000 people. Tory MP Mark Harper was invited to speak at both these events to present his case, but refused. A number of organisations have […]

The Sharpness Nuclear Waste Train Blockade

The story of a direct action by activists from Bristol, Bath and Stroud in 1980; told by one of those who took part with film footage taken during the action. The blockade is placed in the context of the successful campaign of direct action involving railway workers, seafarers and environmental NGOs that stopped nuclear waste dumping at sea. Watch this talk: If you see this text the video has failed to play. Please let us know by emailing brh@brh.org.uk.

A History of Free Festivals: From the Wallies to the Battle of the Beanfield

If you can remember them you just weren’t there. Now Wally Dean will help to fill in the gaps. Firm fixtures on the counter-cultural calendar since the 1960s, free festivals had their heyday between the first Glastonbury Festival in 1970 and the police ambush of the Stonehenge Festival convoy at the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985. However the spirit continued and was much revitalised by the early rave scene. Free festivals functioned as autonomous spaces in which to celebrate, resist and […]

Street Farming

Peter Crump was a member of Street Farm, a London-based collective of anarchist architects and designers working in the early 1970s. They published Street Farmer, an underground paper that, alongside mutating tower blocks, cosmic tractors and sprouting one-way signs, put forward manifestos for the radical transformation of urban living. They offered a powerful vision of green cities in the control of ordinary people (and ordinary sheep), not capitalist, statist, socialist or any other kind of […]

Italy In The 1970s: Bodies In The Street, A Tale Of A Country Like Ours

In the 1970s, Italy came to the brink of revolution, the most widespread assault on state power Western Europe had seen since the Spanish revolution. Every aspect of the state’s functioning was aggressively challenged. Millions of people were actively imposing their demands - workers, students, women. New ways of doing politics were developed including strikes, wildcats, student revolts, armed struggle and people having fun. These are all part of the story. The history of Italian radicalism in […]

From Recruitment To Dialogue: How Does The Radical Left Relate To Workers?

What lessons can we learn from how the Left related to workers and industrial struggles of the 1970s and how should the Left relate to workers today? How should our methods of relating to workers differ between a workplace which is experiencing a high level of class conflict and shop floor organisation, from one which conflict occurs within the framework of union control, from one which is non-unionised and there is little overt conflict and a fairly passive, quiescent and fragmented workforce? […]

Punk And The Pistols

A showing of the influential Arena documentary (1995), which takes a different angle to the more widely known 'The Filth and the Fury'. From the suburban backgrounds of the first '100 punks' to a movement which spanned the globe, Punk and the Pistols examines the anger, ideas and inspiration which led to a movement that shook Britain and spanned the globe. Includes interviews with Jordan, John Lydon, Malcolm McLaren, Siouxsie Sioux and Vivienne Westwood. Introduced by director Paul Tickell. […]

The Anti-Vietnam War Movement

The student rebellion in America in 1968 was fuelled by revulsion against the Vietnam War. It gave momentum to previously existing anti-nuclear and anti-racist movements on the campuses. The difference between the anti-war movement then and now is that the students were being drafted to serve as junior officers in Vietnam. Mike Levine provides an eyewitness account of the student revolt illustrated by contemporary newspaper pictures. Roger surveys the hidden history of resistance to the war […]

How We Won: Strikes In The 70s

The dominant idea of strikes in the 1970s is that of the 'winter of discontent' of 1979 in which workers took industrial action in support of pay claims that breached the social contract brokered between union leaders and the Labour Government. However, the highpoint of workers' militancy was in the early years of the decade when rank and file workers led successful strikes across industry. This meeting will examine the strikes of miners, builders and dockers as well as industrial action in […]