Events Archive - Page 40 of 60 - Bristol Radical History Group

The Eco-anarchism of Street Farm

Steve Hunt will launch his book about Street Farm, published by Tangent Books in April 2014 Street Farm were an anarchist collective that worked to green the counterculture during the 1970s. Peter Crump, Bruce Haggart, Graham Caine and their friends put together Street Farmer, an underground paper that, alongside mutating tower blocks, cosmic tractors and sprouting one-way signs, propagated ideas for the radical transformation of urban living which they called ‘revolutionary urbanism’. Taking […]

The Fair Fight: women boxers in 18th Century Bristol

The Fair Fight is a pulsating historical novel set within the world of female pugilists and their patrons in late eighteenth-century Bristol. It is an unputdownable story which takes you from a filthy brothel to the finest houses in the town, from the world of street fighters to the world of champions. Alive with the smells and sounds of the streets, The Fair Fight is a major debut. Anna Freeman a lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University as well as a multiple slam-winning performance […]

Wally Hope and Stonehenge Festival

It’s 40 years since Wally Hope started the Peoples' Free Festivals at Stonehenge and 30 years since the last one. Wally Dean will tell the tales of The Wallies and the Peace Convoy. He will take us from Wally's utopian vision, his incarceration, and his suspicious demise, to the heyday of the anarchic free festival movement and its oppression at the hands of Thatcher’s Tory Party and the continuing struggle to free Stonehenge today. Wally Hope was the catalyst that spawned Crass and the […]

No Glory: The Real History Of World War 1

Presented by 'Remembering The Real World War 1' - Bristol's campaign to commemorate the real World War 1 – all welcome This meeting represents an opportunity to hear different views about the war and discuss how we can ensure that the real World War 1 is remembered by people across the city. How the war is remembered is as much about the future as the past – while past conflict remains discredited, future foreign military interventions and occupations will remain difficult to sell to the public. […]

Uomini contro – (Many Wars Ago)

Uomini contro (Many Wars Ago) Directed by Francesco Rosi, 100 mins, Italy 1970, Italy 1917 -- society is violently split down the middle over the question of whether to continue intervention in the war. Anarchists and socialists are intent on causing so much trouble that continued intervention is impossible. Railway lines are ripped up, battle lines are drawn. On the Isonzo front a General smells socialism behind the troops reaction to his orders and a disastrous Italian attack upon the Austrian […]

Remembering the Real WWI: Public meeting #3

This is the third meeting in Bristol to discuss opposition to David Cameron's 'truly national commemoration' of WW1 stressing our 'national spirit'. Nationally there are plans to ensure that attention is given to the real causes and effects of the war, rather than an opportunity for our government to re-habilitate this war in particular or war in general. Bristol has long radical traditions and we know there are groups and individuals across the city who will want to ensure that there are events […]

Remembering the Real WWI: Public meeting #2

This is the second meeting in Bristol to discuss opposition to David Cameron's 'truly national commemoration' of WW1 stressing our 'national spirit'. Nationally there are plans to ensure that attention is given to the real causes and effects of the war, rather than an opportunity for our government to re-habilitate this war in particular or war in general. Bristol has long radical traditions and we know there are groups and individuals across the city who will want to ensure that there are […]

Why was Charles I executed?

Justice, liberties and popular petitioning in 1648-49 The regicide of 1649 has often been presented by books, articles and TV dons as the result of religious beliefs related to the King's role as a 'Man of Blood', whose own blood must be shed to deliver England from the taint of killing and the fear of God's vengeance. However the evidence suggests a far more sophisticated political response rooted in the concepts of 'Justice and Liberties' displayed in both public and military petitions. […]

The Game of Drones + Unmanned

Game of Drones: The President and the White House Fly (Handsome Dog Productions, 2013). Investigative poem on topical issue of ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’. Written by Heathcote Williams; Narration and Montage by Alan Cox; produced by Margaret Cox. Screening will be introduced by anti-Drone campaigner John from Bath Activist Network. About Heathcote Williams: "I'd say the overwhelming feature of these poems and perhaps of Williams' whole oeuvre is a sense of the development of an argument, either […]

Book Launch: In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism

Karl Marx remarked that the only way to write about the origins of capitalism is in the letters of blood and fire used to drive workers from the common lands, forests, and waters in the sixteenth century. In this collection of essays, George Caffentzis argues that the same is true for the annals of twenty-first-century capitalism. Information technology, immaterial production, financialization, and globalization have been trumpeted as inaugurating a new phase of capitalism that puts it beyond […]