At the Watershed, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX. 1 July 1916 was the first day of the battle of the Somme. That day saw the highest British casualties of any day in World War 1. The battle continued for four months. Over a million men on both sides were killed or wounded. The British and French armies gained six miles of German territory. In August 1916 the government released the film 'Battle Of The Somme'. Sequences in the film were faked and the government specified what music […]
A re-enactment of Walter Ayles' Militry Tribunal Bristol Register Office, Corn Street, BS1 1JG. Walter Ayles was Bristol’s most prominent opponent of World War 1. He was a member of the Independent Labour Party and city councillor for Easton from 1912. When war was declared in 1914 he was the only councillor to vote against a motion offering “whole hearted support” for the war. He became a national executive member of the No-Conscription Fellowship. In April 1916, when conscription was […]
Cyril Pearce is Britain's foremost researcher into World War 1 conscientious objectors (COs) and war resisters. His book 'Comrades in Conscience' looked at the anti-war movement in Huddersfield. Since then, Cyril has extended his work to look for other ‘Huddersfields’ and has created a database of British COs - the Pearce Register of British Conscientious Objectors The database currently contains details of almost 20000 men who refused to fight in the war and is an invaluable tool for any local […]
Captain Jack White DSO attracted adjectives like jam does wasps - flamboyant, gallant, romantic, handsome, idiosyncratic, incorrigible - and every one of them was appropriate. He was a Presbyterian from the northern part of Ireland who fought in the Boer War, became the first commander of the Irish Citizen Army in the 1913 Dublin Lockout, was arrested for sedition during WW1, fell foul of all the police/paramilitary/governmental authorities in Ireland between 1913 and 1936, and participated in […]
Live performance of poem by Heathcote Williams The Red Dagger: the symbol of the City of London's treachery and oppression, paraded about in plain sight for 700 years; but who noticed? A live performance of Heathcote Williams' epic poem depicting the origin of the infamous blade and detailing the depredations of the City of London over the last 650 years. Watch this performance
It is 44 years since the first-ever national building workers strike in Britain. Five months after the strike ended, 24 pickets were picked up and charged with over 200 offences, including unlawful assembly, intimidation and affray. Six of the pickets were also charged with ‘conspiracy to intimidate’. None of the pickets had been cautioned or arrested during the strike. There were no police complaints laid against the pickets at the time. At the first Shrewsbury trial, beginning in October 1973, […]
Just over 50 years ago the first Beeching Report – The Re-shaping of the British Railways – changed the face of British transport forever. In this short talk we'll discuss the world the railways built – through engineering, craftsmanship, aesthetics, and the democratizing of travel. This is not an uncritical look at the railway age. The cost of building the railways was large in terms of loss of life, corrupt business dealings, and the irreparable impact on communities, often moved against their […]
Dave and Stuart Wise were the unrepentant core of 1960’s revolutionary group King Mob, part of the English section of the Situationist International (an ephemeral affiliation; the notoriously fractious SI expelled them). This will be a rare opportunity to hear them in conversation with members of the Bristol Radical History Group (and whoever wants to chip in!). In a kind of open mic radical history session, we seek to revisit the (anti-)work of his majesty King Mob where it belongs; unmediated, […]
The Bristolian local broadsheet is well known in this city for exposing corruption, lies and duplicity amongst Bristol’s ‘high and mighty’ of all shades of political persuasion. What is less well known is that the paper was originally founded by James Acland, a radical agitator, who first wrote, financed and published a daily version in 1827. Its pages contained scathing attacks on the Corporation, Magistracy and wealthy Merchants who made up the oligarchy that controlled the city. Acland […]
The history of Bristol’s Great Western Cotton Works in Barton Hill, which opened in 1838, is little known. The story of its workforce — mainly low-paid women and children — has never been told. From the 1830s to the early twentieth century, Barton Hill workers endured long working hours, high rates of industrial accidents and ill-health from the cotton dust and humidity. Moreover, they were subjected to wage cuts and fines by a series of unrelenting managers. Divided along age and gender lines […]
