News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

Winston Trew statement on the quashing of the convictions of Saliah Mehmet and Basil Peterkin

In 2022 Winston Trew of the Oval Four gave a talk at the Bristol Radical History Festival detailing his lifelong campaign for justice for the victims of racist and corrupt police officer Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell. Winston’s devastating story is detailed in his books Black for a Cause… and Rot at the Core: The Serious crimes of a Detective Sergeant . A young Black Power activist in 1973, Winston and three friends were accosted in the Oval tube station by plain clothes police, arrested, […]

Bristol Allotmenteers Resist! campaign as the eternal struggle for land continues

By Tim

Image consists of small pictures of veg, plants and seedlings. Plus the text Bristol Allotmenteers Resist and brief explainer of the campaign, plus important links for people to check out. THese are in the article below too.

On a wet and windy night on the 4th January 2024, upto 200 people attended the first Bristol Allotmenteers Resist! public campaign meeting, at St Werburgh's community centre. By 7.05pm it was standing room only. By 7.20pm I was up at the front, with old pal Mike Feingold, the respected local food grower and permaculture teacher. We had 10 minutes max between us, and Mike was going to talk on his 30yrs of allotment experience in Bristol. We'd agreed that I would, quite literally, do '1000 years […]

Bristol Radical History Festival 2024

By Tim

The next Bristol Radical History Festival will be on Saturday 20th April, from 10am-4.30pm. Once again our partners at M Shed will host us, for what will be our 6th Festival, at the museum on the city’s historic harbourside that tells the story of Bristol and its unique place in the world. We warmly invite you to join us at this popular and free event. So put the date in your diary now! Then tell your friends, fellow workers & communities, comrades and networks. Our festival organising team […]

Legacy of Violence

A History of the British Empire

By Caroline Elkins

This is a very long – 777 pages – but very important book. Subtitled “A History of the British Empire”, it not only exposes the violence on which the Empire was built but also reveals the way in which systematic attempts were made to conceal it from journalists and historians. Caroline Elkins, based at Harvard University, is one of the historians who were determined to reveal the truth. She is not inhibited about naming those historians who have accepted the Colonial Office version of past […]

One Year! Photographs From The Miners Strike 1984/5

Exhibition Presented By The Martin Parr Foundation In Bristol

The Martin Parr Foundation (MPF) is presenting a valuable exhibition of photographs & ephemera to mark the 40th anniversary of the Miners Strike 1984/5: One Year! Photographs from the Miners Strike 1984/5. The exhibition will run from 18 January to 31 March 2024, at the MPF building at 316 Paintworks, Bristol BS4 3AR (check this page for map, access, transport etc) Alongside the exhibition wil be a series of events - see here for tickets - of which the following are recommended: 18 January, […]

From Pirates to Proletarians

The Experience of the Pilots and Watermen of Crockerne Pill in the Nineteenth Century

Wednesday 17 January - 3.00-4.00pm - Portishead Senior Forum, Folkhouse, High Street, Portishead BS20 6PR Mike Richardson charts the experiences, in the nineteenth century, of Bristol’s pilots, and their assistants, in their struggle to defend their jobs and their traditional way of working, particularly as steam power emerged to replace sail. Their relationship with the shipowners, masters and city authorities was a complex one, and broke down periodically into open conflict. They lived almost […]

H.H. Gore – Bristol’s Nineteenth Century Gay Christian Socialist Solicitor

BRHG are very pleased to announce that as part of LGBTQ+ History Month 2024 Mike Richardson will be speaking about the 'people's lawyer' Hugh Holmes Gore, the subject of his excellent book. Anglo – Catholic convert to the left, Hugh Holmes Gore, was a key figure in Bristol’s labour movement during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Gore linked Clifton Christian Socialists, morally concerned about the poverty and suffering caused by economic depression, with the working class […]

Conviction Politics Project

5.00 pm, Thursday 18th January at the Newport Rising Hub, 170 Commercial Street, Newport NP20 1JN. Professor Nick Carter of the Australian Catholic University and former Head of History at University of Wales, Newport will introduce the Conviction Politics Project. This is an international digital history project exploring the impact of radicals and rebels transported as political convicts to Australia on their place of exile. In association with Six Points Publishing and Our Chartist Heritage. […]

No Cure, No Fee, Boarding Excepted: Mason’s Madhouses In Old Fishponds

People's University of Fishponds - Sun 28 Jan 2024 - 7:00om - The Nissen Hut, Eastville Park, Bristol. Journalist, Fishponds Voice History columnist and Bristol Radical History Group author Mike Jempson will reveal some of the fascinating facts his research dug up about the old private madhouse which dominated Fishponds in its day. His talk includes some of the institution’s more startling treatments, the sensational public inquiry and the shameful end of the Mason dynasty - the family firm that […]

Deference and Dissent

Labour relations in a family firm

By Mike Richardson

J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd, 1855–1927 Deference and Dissent provides a window into the working lives of compositors, letterpress machinists, and bookbinders and their relationships with their employer. It looks at their collective voice, disputes, strikes, workplace culture, mechanisation of typesetting, as well as the impact of other significant factors such as the First World War and the economic slump in the early 1920s. Mike Richardson’s work contributes to understanding the complexity of the […]