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The Struggle For Democracy, How We Won It And How We Lost It In the run up to the 2010 election this is your essential guide to how we got the vote, where representational democracy has gone wrong and possible alternatives to party democracy. Recent British histories arrogantly claimed that the 'we' brought democracy to the Empire and ultimately the world in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Despite centuries of struggle to wrestle power from an elite few, the vote in Britain is still seen as a gift […]

Like the Muppets before them, BRHG Take Manhattan

Bristol Radical History Group offers a quality blend of events for Spring 2009, covering both historical and contemporary issues. We begin with future utopian visions (Nowtopia), consider the hidden histories of seminal events of the 1980s (Hillsborough and The Miners’ Strike) and champion revolutionary thinkers who our rulers afear’d (Thomas Paine). To top it all we will be unveiling a plaque on the Seven Stars Pub to commemorate the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson and the Bristol sailors who blew […]

For Bristol Radical History Week 2008 we turn our attention to three connected themes which have sent shivers down the spines of our rulers whether monarchs or ministers for a millennium...Regicide, Republicanism and Political Assassination. As the first people in modern times to have both created a Republic (hussar!) and tried and executed a traitorous king we have both an interesting and progressive history to explore. Starting with this momentous moment, The English Revolution, we will chart […]

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ... Marx and Engels: The Communist Manifesto 1848 This country has lost […]

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 […]

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 events from 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 […]