News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

A history walk with puppets: Steps Against War

Discovering untold stories of Bedminster people in the First World War

Otherstory puppetry will be leading a history walk using the medium of puppetry to tell the untold stories of Bedminster people who resisted the First World War, and who refused to kill. Otherstory have devised and organised the walk with local people and in collaboration with Remembering the Real World War 1. The walk will start from the foyer of M Shed, cross the river, wind its way through Southville, along North Street and part of East Street, ending up at the Steam Crane pub. At points […]

Harbottle and Jonas

Songs from the WW1 Conscientious Objectors Songbook

For this project, David Harbottle (vocals, acoustic guitar and stomp box) and Freya Jonas (vocals, harmonium and concertina) have reimagined several songs from the WW1 Conscientious Objectors (COs) Songbook. Whilst the words of the songs remain untouched, the duo have composed new vocal melodies and musical arrangements for each piece, breathing new life into the songs but allowing the words to speak as they once did. David and Freya have recorded and pressed onto CD the three songs from the COs […]

Revisiting The Monocled Mutineer with Paul McGann

BBC TV’s ‘The Monocled Mutineer’ star, Paul McGann, in conversation with Lois Bibbings from Remembering the Real World War 1 and the University of Bristol.

The Red Violinist

A talk illustrated with six musical interludes on Eduard Soermus, an Estonian violinist who lived in Merthyr Tydfil at the end of the First World War but was expelled from Britain in 1919. The concert in Bargoed that led to his expulsion was chaired by conscientious objector Morgan Evans (later an MP) and the debate at the concert between Bolshevik-supporting Soermus, the Independent Labour Party pacifist Evans and an outraged soldier in the audience dramatically illustrates the division of […]

Otherstory puppet theatre: ‘Taking a Holiday’

Taking a Holiday is a tale of conscientious objectors and others who went on the run from conscription during the First World War – and of the networks that supported them. A story of struggle in wartime – full of intrigue, escapes, comradeship…and bikes. What does it mean to be a refugee and on the run in your own country? Who will give you a bed for the night, a job… or a means of escape? A table top and shadow puppet show based on the true stories of ordinary people in 1916/17 and the hidden […]

Closing speech by Bruce Kent (CND)

The Commemoration, Conflict & Conscience festival weekend will be closed by Bruce Kent of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

Conscience Panel

A rich and complex history: conscientious objection to the military in the First World War (Lois Bibbings) This talk revisits what we know about objectors – in terms of their thoughts, motivations, decision-making and actions as well as how they were seen and treated – in order to reflect on the importance of portraying this (and other) rich and complex stories of protest and resistance. John Percy Fletcher, Thomas Gregory, and the Quaker campaign against compulsory military training in New […]

Student Voices After The Great War

Commemorating Conflict, Building Peace

Between 1914 and 1918, young people fought and fell on the battlefield in unprecedented numbers. Our event captures the voices of those who survived the conflict and returned to study at college or university, supported by the first government grants for higher education. The scheme for ex-service students helped individuals who would have otherwise been unable to afford higher education, and boosted the numbers in the universities. While mourning the fallen, this generation built a student […]

Commemoration Panel 2

The In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, a cultural and transnational museum about WWI (Piet Chielens) The Ypres Salient, the infamous bulge in the front line around the Belgian city of Ypres was one of the major battlefields on the Western Front. Over 220,000 British and Commonwealth lives were lost there between 1914 and 1918. Cemeteries, monuments and the Menin Gate, the very first Missing Memorial ever built, are the main reasons why British people have visited and still continue to visit […]

Women and Opposition To War – 2

'It is up to women to start a crusade for peace!' Bradford Women’s Humanity League, 1916-18 (Eve Haskins) Existing research on female war resistance in Britain focuses mainly upon the educated middle-class women who had the time and resources to oppose the war, however the peace seeking efforts of working-class women has been little acknowledged, especially in individual regions. Recent research on the nationwide anti-war organisation the Women’s Peace Crusade has begun to address this research […]