News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

Housing Activism and Squatting in 1970’s Bristol

Includes a screening of 18-minute documentary The Law Breakers (1973). Mac will begin by giving a brief personal/political history of what motivated him to get involved. He will be covering the squatting campaign that took place between 1972-1974 in Ashley Road Bristol, and direct action taken like the occupation of The South West Electricity Board showrooms (SWEB,) for example. The BBC West documentary will feature previously homeless single parent families, a support meeting by 'Bristol […]

Siegi Moos and the Anti-Nazi Movement in pre-War Germany

Siegi Moos was an active anti-Nazi 1928-1933 in Berlin, a time which ended with the Nazis gaining power and Siegi going underground, before escaping Germany altogether. Little publicity is given to anti-Nazi movement in Germany, which Siegi’s activities shed light on. Although many of the organisations which make up this movement were originally established or supported by the German Communist Party (KPD), they were in practice semi-autonomous. Indeed, the Red Front, a crucial - and from 1929, […]

Bristol Anarchist Bookfair 2015

Saturday 25th April, 2015

As part of this years Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, Bristol Radical History Group will again be running the Radical History Zone at Hydra Books, 34 Old Market, BS2 0EZ. Bristol Anarchist Bookfair is once again at The Trinity Centre on Trinity Road.

Bread Print Roses

A radical history group from Frome and Bath.

Borders and Technology

By Randell Brantley

Public discussion event Friday February 20th 2015 7-9pm @ Hydra Bookshop www.hydrabooks.org 34 Old Market Bristol BS2 0EZ Speakers: Statewatch www.statewatch.org Breaking the Frame hosts speakers and discussion on contemporary and historical surveillance and control over the movement of people, plus resistance.

City Under Fire

The Bristol Riots and Aftermath

By Geoffrey Amey

From Dreadnought Books The riots of 1831 gripped the city of Bristol for three days at the end of October. Most general histories of the city include some reference to this infamous event. ‘This lively row gave Bristol the biggest advertisement in its history’ (Columbus p. 16, 1893), yet it has rarely received more considerable attention. There appear to be only four book-length histories: ‘A Citizen’ (John Eagles) produced his assessment in the following year, The Bristol Riots, Their Causes, […]

Bread Or Batons?

1932 The Old Market Riot Walking Tour

Strikers, Hobblers, Conchies & Reds

A Radical History of Bristol, 1880-1939

By Roger Ball, Mike Richardson, Stephen E. Hunt, Dave Backwith

Strikers, Hobblers, Conchies & Reds front cover

This book can be bought from breviarystuff.org.uk. In the 1970s and 80s a revival of interest emerged in researching Bristol’s vigorous radical past, reflected in the publications of the Bristol branch of the Historical Association and Bristol Broadsides. This revival has continued, echoed in the more recent historical studies that have advanced the work of filling in Bristol’s remarkable past — especially the involvement of the Bristol women’s movement in the nineteenth century in anti-slavery […]

Central Labour College

A Chapter in the History of Adult Working-class

By W.W.Craik

Written by William Craik a railway guard who got kicked out of Ruskin College, Oxford and was then the principal of the CLC in the early 1920s The Central Labour College schooled a whole generation of the brightest workers mainly from the mines and railways of Britain between 1909 and 1929. It was formed by the dissident students who had been thrown out of Ruskin college following a strike (see Colin Waugh ‘Plebs’ ISSN 0459-2026). The CLC was housed initially in Oxford until the University […]

Eastville And Stapleton Workhouses