One hundred years ago, on July 15, 1915, two hundred thousand Welsh miners launched a strike for higher pay. Their coal was powering the Royal Navy in the midst of a world war. The miners defied the coalowners, the government, the law, the king and their own leaders. Why? And what lessons, if any, can be learnt for today? Robert Griffiths is a labour historian and currently General Secretary of the Communist Party.
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.
Tracing Movements is a collection of films documenting struggles against immigration controls in Europe. At RHZ, we will be screening two films: Patra, Dead End relates the campaigns to stop the destruction of migrant camps in the port-town of Patra, Greece. Today, migrants continue to live in limbo, with no chance of gaining in Greece, and stopped from continuing their westward journey. Across the Adriatic in the fields of southern Italy, seasonal migrant workers live segregated from Italian […]
Published in 2012, All Knees and Elbows critically surveys tendencies which sought to uncover the agency of ‘ordinary’ people in challenging capitalism and developing different forms of social organisation. All Knees and Elbows engages the work of a number of British and international left historians and groups, including Silvia Federici, History Workshop, Eric Hobsbawm, C.L.R James, Peter Linebaugh, Sheila Rowbotham, Jacques Rancière and E.P. Thompson. Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts will […]
Members of our very own Bristol Radical History Group will share some choice snippets from their research as an appetiser to promote two new publications, including the group’s first book-length collaboration. Strikers, Hobblers and Conchies is published by Breviary Stuff. Watch this talk
All Out! Dancing in Dulais! tells the story of London Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a group which twinned with a mining community in South Wales. The inspiration for the recent film Pride, it is one of many examples of grassroots film-making during the 1984-5 British miners' strike. After watching the documentary, we will discuss the broad range of solidarity activism during one of the most significant strikes in British labour history: trade unionists, feminists, black activists and […]
Includes a screening of 18-minute documentary The Law Breakers (1973). Mac will begin by giving a brief personal/political history of what motivated him to get involved. He will be covering the squatting campaign that took place between 1972-1974 in Ashley Road Bristol, and direct action taken like the occupation of The South West Electricity Board showrooms (SWEB,) for example. The BBC West documentary will feature previously homeless single parent families, a support meeting by 'Bristol […]
Siegi Moos was an active anti-Nazi 1928-1933 in Berlin, a time which ended with the Nazis gaining power and Siegi going underground, before escaping Germany altogether. Little publicity is given to anti-Nazi movement in Germany, which Siegi’s activities shed light on. Although many of the organisations which make up this movement were originally established or supported by the German Communist Party (KPD), they were in practice semi-autonomous. Indeed, the Red Front, a crucial - and from 1929, […]
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 […]
