Introduction On 11th November 2017 Colston's Girls’ School (CGS) announced that they would not be changing the name of the school, despite its associations with Edward Colston, the Bristol merchant who both organised and profited from the transatlantic slave trade. Colston was a major investor, manager and then deputy-governor of the Royal African Company (RAC) which held a monopoly over the West African slave-trade in the seventeenth century.] During Colston’s time managing and then leading the […]
Not A BRHG Event
Part of Bristol Women’s Voice, International Women’s Day Celebrations in Room 1P04, City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR. Note: A crèche with two hour slots is available at the venue. Black and Asian women's involvement in the British Suffrage Movement is largely unknown. Similarly, in America, the story of black women's struggles for the vote was omitted from the triumphalist histories written at the time of enfranchisement in 1920. The talk explores my efforts to uncover these stories so […]
Not A BRHG Event
Part of Bristol Women’s Voice, International Women’s Day Celebrations in Room 1P04, at City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR. Note: A creche with two hour slots is available at the venue. Some writers have claimed that human religion began everywhere with worship of a 'Great Mother Goddess' responsible for fertility of earth and humans. Archaeologists have also looked to find a 'leader' or 'chieftain' in prehistoric communities. But are assumptions about hierarchy in early religion and […]
Not A BRHG Event
Part of Bristol Women's Voice, International Women's Day Celebrations in Room 1P04, City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR. Note: A crèche with two hour slots is available at the venue. During the 1930’s a small group of ultra-nationalistic women, joined Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF). Surprisingly some of these women were former high ranking members of the suffragette movement. This short talk looks at the politics of the time, why women may have been attracted to the BUF […]
In Russia in October 1917 the Bolsheviks could rule only in coalition with LEFT SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES who's charismatic leader MARIA SPIRIDONOVA was the equal of Lenin. Till April 1918 they maintained a fragile alliance but by June an uprising was inevitable and the outcome uncertain. SPIRIDONOVA maps those few months as tension grows and the divide between Leninism and a more libertarian socialism becomes starker........and fixed in history. Spiridonova is awash with assassins, plotters, […]
Not A BRHG Event
Members of Plan C, who have just returned from volunteering on civil projects in Rojava (the Democratic Confederation of Northern Syria) will be reporting back on Rojava and the wider Kurdish movement. The revolution is based on direct democracy, gender equality and ecology, and seeks to create a solidarity economy. How can we in the West learn from what is happening and offer our solidarity? Followed by question and answer session. We will also be screening some short films in tribute to Mehmet […]
During and after the First World War, ‘German’ and ‘Germany’ became bywords for militarism and a hundred years later commemoration of the First World War centenary can sometimes give the impression that the war was accepted without opposition in Germany, and that the First World War was fought without any dissenting German voices. This talk will look beyond German militarism at the various forms of anti-war resistance practiced by German citizens, including those conscripted into the German […]
Not A BRHG Event
Artists’ video installation at the Bearpit, (underpass to Broadmead shops) St James Barton roundabout, BS1 3LY Shot in landscapes of Eastern Nigeria, Nevis & Greenbank cemetery Bristol UK, played on a loop in the Bearpit unfolds a human story in a trilogy of artist video film shorts that renders visible three generations of 18th century African women from one family separated by the transatlantic trade in human trafficking; Fanny (Fumnanya) Coker, her mother Igbo Polly (Adaeze) & […]
As part of the Journey to Justice events this walk is about the struggles of Bristol’s men and women workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It starts on Valentine Bridge (behind Temple Meads Railway Station) with an introductory talk, crosses over to Avon Street, continues through the old industrial working class areas of St Philip’s and Barton Hill via the Great Western Cotton Factory, and ends at the Old Council House in Corn Street. Starting at Valentine Bridge on the Floating […]
Turbulence describes how the expanding armaments industry of the First World war drew thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled workers – women as well as men- into Bristol’s aircraft factories. Skilled men in the workforce resented their arrival. They also defended their own exemption from military conscription. Opposition to the dilution of skills through changes in the production process sometimes combined with traditional male hostility towards women at the work place. Nevertheless the […]
