With Since the descent into civil war in Syria, revolutionary forces have seized control of the Kurdish region of Rojava. This talk aims to assess the strengths,challenges and vulnerabilities of the revolutionary project under way there. In terms of strengths, I will focus principally on four: (1) revolutionary discipline and the power of ideology; (2) consciousness-raising, collective mobilization, and assembly democracy; (3) gender emancipation; and (4) attempts to accommodate ethnic and […]
Introduction The last twenty years or so have seen a wave of publications recounting and examining the history of the New Left and radical Black, Latino and Native American organisations of the 1960s and 70s in the United States. Many of these books have been concerned with the spectacular exploits of these formations, particularly the armed struggle fractions which appeared in the 1970s such as the Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army and the paramilitary sections of the American Indian […]
What does the Italian/ American mafia, the Italian Communist Party, Cary Grant, Field Marshal Tito, the KGB, and a McGriffin TV have in common? Well read this book and you will have a find out. All these are marvellously and skilfully interwoven into a rich plot that spans 541 pages of compelling reading. What makes the story even more enthralling is the fact that it is written by a collective of authors, going under the name of Wu Ming. Previously known as Luther Blisset, a famous black […]
The Secret War Against Apartheid
Ken Keable, editor of London Recruits - the secret war against apartheid will be talking about that book and his own role in the story, and Pete Smith, who worked secretly for the ANC over many years, will be talking about ANC and South Afirican Communist Party member and scientist Dr Ron Press, who lived much of his life in Bristol . Many Bristol political activists will remember Ron Press for his publicly known work but few will know of the secret work that he did as an exiled South African […]
A BBC film from 1973 about the squatting movement in Bristol. See also Mac McConnell's talk "Housing Activism and Squatting in 1970’s Bristol" at the 2015 Anarchist Bookfair.
Some AngryWorkers will be round and about England in the next few weeks showing a brand new documentary about the logistics workers' struggles/movement in Italy. Called 'Ditching The Fear', this film portrays the struggle of mainly migrant workers against the harsh labour regime of companies like TNT or IKEA. These struggles emerged in 2008 and have since then, not only won better conditions, but also put workers’ self-organisation back on the wider political agenda. Workers’ militants of the […]
A talk followed by a tour at Bath City Farm. To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Bath City farm, come and hear author Sephen E. Hunt talk about the history of city farms. Street Farm was a part of the trend towards 'green' thinking during the 1970s and built the first ecological house. They had close links to the urban farming movement. email alexia@bathcityfarm.co.uk to book.
The 1984/5 Miners’ strike changed their lives and for the feisty Women Against Pit Closures there was “No Going Back!” Anne-Marie Sweeney’s film Going Through the Change!, made for National Women Against Pit Closures (NWAPC), shows a fearless, feisty movement that has reverberated throughout the struggles of working-class women over the past 30 years. Not confined to the miners’ strike of 1984-85, the film reveals how members of WAPC have never stopped supporting other women in solidarity. The […]
This book describes the making of the 1991 TV documentary ‘Hughesovka and the New Russia, Dreaming a City’ created by the author and the Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams. Focusing on the town of Donetsk in the Ukraine from its origin in eighteen-seventy, when it was a small village occupied by one hundred and seventy people, it documents the historical events from that time through the Russian revolutions, Bolshevism, Stalinism, Nazi occupation, the collapse of Communism and rising Ukraine […]
In April we hosted Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movement, a talk by Anandi Ramamurthy on the her book of the same name. Recently a film has been release on the same subject: A documentary film made by local young people looking at the history of their community from the 1960s to the 1980s with particular interest in the murder of Gurdeep Chaggar in 1976, the 1979 anti-fascist demonstrations and the death of Blair Peach and the 1981 burning down of the Hambrough Tavern. The film uses the […]
