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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 […]

Chavs

The demonization of the working class

By Owen Jones

The backdrop of this book is the social and economic transformation of society in Britain over the last 30 years overseen by the political management of Thatcher and Blair; characterised by the erosion of the British organised industrial working class, through the destruction of British industry. However the book is not concerned with looking at that class war (when competing fractions of the bourgeoisie fought a war to the death while uniting to attack the combativity of the proletariat across […]

The Shadow Of Marriage

Singleness in England 1914-60

By Katherine Holden

This very well researched book concerns single men and women living in England during the early years until the mid twentieth century. Information taken from various sources, such as official records, statistics, interviews with elderly single people and institutions, create a very clear picture of people who were unmarried during those years. The attitude of society at that time towards illegitimacy, the unmarried mother, abortion, divorce, adoption, homosexuality, is discussed. Singleness was […]

In Contempt of All Authority

Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660

By Buchanan Sharp

Two of the most common types of popular disorders in late Tudor and early Stuart England were the food riots and the anti-enclosure riots in royal forests. Of particular interest are the forest riots known collectively as the Western Rising of 1626-1632, and the lesser known disorders in the Western forests which took place during the English Civil War. The central aims of this volume are to establish the social status of the people who engaged in those riots and to determine the social and […]