The three-year strike which followed the July 1984 refusal of eleven workers at Dunnes' Stores Henry Street branch in Dublin to handle South African goods is perhaps the most celebrated episode of anti-apartheid activism outside Southern Africa, yielding memoirs, academic scholarship, radio and television documentaries and even a play. While still recounting the essential narrative of the strike for those unfamiliar with it, Padraig Durnin's talk will explore what made it exceptional in […]
John Boughton’s talk will cover the early history of public housing from the almshouses and parish housing of pre-industrial times to the council housing of the interwar period. As the Industrial Revolution came to transform Britain’s economy and society and democratic forces grew, Victorian elites came slowly to accept the inevitability of state intervention in housing. John will discuss the forces that shaped council housing in the later nineteenth century and the ideals motivating housing […]
After the financial crash of 1929 and during the years of the 'great depression' in the 1930s, the Ministry of Labour in Britain introduced a series of 'instructional camps' for the long-term unemployed, which were supported by successive governments. Over 150,000 men from 'distressed areas' were sent to do hard labour in these remote settlements. Using contemporary images and excerpts of oral history from the film Old Hands this talk explains the nature of these camps, how they functioned and […]
Chris Bowkett’s talk focuses on the untold history of Stapleton Prison, the home of captured soldiers and sailors during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Using stories of the prisoners themselves, this talk reveals the surprising amount of freedom offered to Britain’s “enemies” whilst in captivity, contrasted with their biggest problem: boredom. This talk covers both the inventive and self-destructive ways “the miserables” occupied their time at His Majesty’s pleasure.
Paul Smith’s talk will draw on his research into the history of Hartcliffe, designed by planners in the 1940s on the garden city model, built as a housing estate in the 1950s. This tale of the steady removal of planned facilities and the reduction in the quality of homes presented huge challenges to a community of ‘pioneers’ exported to the outskirts of the city. The story of Hartcliffe was repeated across the country as estates were built on the edges of towns and cities. This story has […]
Catch Bristol’s wonderful Red Notes Choir, who will support the Bristol Radical History Festival by performing at 11:30am. They’ll be singing in the Ground Floor Foyer by the M Shed main entrance. The Red Notes Choir is a Bristol-based socialist choir. They have a repertoire of songs from around the world on historical, union, peace, green and human rights themes. We use the streets of Bristol and further afield to spread our message of fighting for the rights of working people, those who are […]
Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe that escaped fascist rule in World War Two and where neo-Nazi parties have never enjoyed success. Yet over the last decade Ireland, north and south, has seen a new wave of far-right street demonstrations, arson attacks, and racist violence. Historian and best-selling author Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc's new book BURN THEM OUT! A history of fascism and the far-right in Ireland exposes for the first time the hidden histories of the hate filled ideologies […]
A walk though time and space with Mark Steeds, covering no less than 1,500 years of Bristols historic connections with Dublin and featuring Saints and Sinners, Roundheads and Royalists, Colonists and Criminals, Transportees and Treachery, Merchants and Murders… From the efforts of Wulfstan in 1090 to ban the trade in Anglo Saxon slaves with the invading Vikings in Dublin, via the Easter Monday massacre of 1209 in Killin Woods, outside of Dublin, when 500 new settlers from Bristol were attacked […]
BRHG brings together a selection of posters of the Mozambican Revolution from the ‘Our Sophisticated Weapon’ exhibition and other archival material relating to the campaign for independence and the ensuing civil war. Speaker: 11.30am - Dave Spurgeon will guide you through the exhibits. Dave will provide a brief history of Mozambican independence, how it supported and inspired liberation struggles across Southern Africa and the price it paid which impacted its own development. He will identify […]
During the strike, in response to the horrific images of miners and their supporters being battered by the police, donations of cash were received from around the world, More money was raised in Ireland per head of population than anywhere else, Britain included, with many support groups being set up to 'adopt' individual mining communities. The story is told of one elderly woman in Dublin putting a £10 note, a large proportion of her pension, into a collection tin. She said it was to repay the […]
