News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

The Seven Stars Plaque Project

Tuesday 1st January, 2008 to Sunday 31st May, 2009

Between January 2008 and May 2009 Bristol Radical History Group raised over £3000 for a new plaque outside The Seven Stars pub in Thomas Lane, Redcliffe, Bristol. The pub is not only an important historical landmark in Bristol but also holds a unique place within world history. The Seven Stars, and the help given by Landlord Thompson, played a major role in enabling abolitionist Thomas Clarkson to gather evidence which changed British Public Opinion about the slave trade, demonstrating first the […]

Bristol Radical History Week 2007 – Pirates, Witches & Smugglers

Saturday 27th October to Tuesday 6th November, 2007

This year Bristol Radical History Group turns its single beady eye onto these icons of the past, so deeply reviled by the rulers of their time. Who were these 'outcasts'? Why are we so fascinated by them? Do their villainous representations carry clues to their real nature? The week kicks off with two days (Sunday 28th and Monday 29th) devoted to the enemies of Customs and Excise, the Smugglers. Local historians Jim McNeil, Kev Davis and Dr. Dave Cullum will span the West Country from […]

Miscellaneous 2007

Sunday 19th August, 2007

Miscellaneous events from 2007.

Slavery – The Hidden History

Sunday 4th March to Thursday 15th March, 2007

March 2007 was the 200th anniversary of the parliamentary abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. The 'celebration' of the abolition was controversial for several reasons. As a school children we were taught that William Wilberforce was the 'conscience of the nation' reforming the worst excesses of the Empire for the benefit of all. We were taught nothing of the politics, economics or military aspects of the trade in human flesh that filled both the coffers of the British ruling […]

Bristol Radical History Week 2006

Saturday 28th October to Sunday 5th November, 2006

32 Events, Over 9 Days at 7 Venues. Bristol Radical History Week 2006 was a series of events aimed at opening up to public scrutiny some of the hidden and misrepresented history of Bristol. Rather then concentrating on royals, famous engineers or wealthy merchants, Bristol Radical History Week was concerned with the proper people of Bristol. The mass of sometime rebellious and mutinous people who had their own agendas to fulfil. Lectures, debates, music, art, film, re-enactments and (if you can […]

Sacred Hunger

By Barry Unsworth

This book was published in 1992 and won the Booker Prize. It is about greed, raw capitalism and the relentless pursuit of profit, the sacred hunger, "which justifies everything and sanctifies all purposes" in the triangular slave trade. The story revolves around a conflict between Thurso, the captain of a slave ship and Paris the ship’s doctor. Life aboard the slave ship is contrasted with the life of the wealthy owners back in Liverpool. The nature and mechanics of the barbaric treatment of […]

The Given Day

By Dennis Lehane

Italian Anarchist, Galleanists, Latvian revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, communists, NAACP, Irish cops and gangsters thrown together into a mix with immigration, racism, corruption, strikes, riot and class warfare as a city goes into meltdown leading up to the Boston police strike of 1919. Two main characters are Danny Coughlin, Irish and son of one of Boston’s most powerful police captains and Luther Lawrence, poor and black, and on the run from racism and the mob. While Danny wrestles with his […]

Half Blood Blues

By Esi Edugyan

Berlin, 1939. A young, brilliant trumpet player, Hieronymus, is arrested in a Paris café. The star musician was never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths, the only witness that day, still refuses to speak of what he saw. When Chip Jones, his friend and fellow band member, comes to visit, recounting the discovery of a strange letter, Sid begins a slow journey towards redemption. From the smokey bars of pre-war […]

The People’s Act of Love

By James Meek

Its 1919 and the civil war which followed the Russian revolution is drawing to an end. A Czech division is trapped in Yazyk, an isolated Siberian town, with the Bolsheviks advancing along the rail route into the town. Armored trains hold the key to military power. However the townspeople are made up of religious sect of voluntary castrates. (Both these groups of people existed in Russia at the time and so the events are based loosely on historical fact.) When the enigmatic revolutionary Samarin […]

The Intellectual Life Of The British Working Classes

By Jonathan Rose

This is a brilliant book for all people interested in the history of the working class . How good books, music and fine art moved the long revolution forward for the poor, uneducated masses, from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. All thinking people will be inspired by the memoirs, social surveys, statistics and research into how the working classes educated themselves. One chapter entitled ‘What Was Leonard Bast Really Like?’ gives the reader a completely new insight into the […]