The Great Anti-Slavery Convention

This artilce is taken from: Pictorial Times, "A Weekly Journal of News, Litrature, Fine Art and the Drama", Vol. 1 March 18 - August 19 1843, p211-213, Saturday June 17 1843. "Engravings by Henry Vizetelly and Others". This article was found in Bristol Central Reference Library. If you wich to use any of the pictures please contact them: refandinfo@bristol.gov.uk. THE GREAT ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION. This great Convention, composed of delegates from almost every land, assembled on Tuesday last at […]

Protests in Brazil

What's behind the protests that mobilized hundreds of thousands of Brazilians and shocked the country in the middle of the Confederations Cup? Who are the protesters and what are their flags and demands? What are the direction and the consequences of the mobilization? Two eye-witnesses will give a visual report on what happened in Sao Paolo and try to answer these questions.

Bliss Tweed Mill Strike, 1913–14

Causes, Conduct and Consequences

Eighteenth of December 2013 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Bliss Tweed Mill strike in Chipping Norton. The years 1910 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 witnessed an upsurge in strike activity in Great Britain and Ireland involving many thousands of workers. By the summer of 1914, strikes, in the coal, cotton, transport, metal, engineering, shipbuilding and building industries, were viewed by the government as a crisis of severe proportions. This […]

Friendly Societies Against The Big Society

The National Health Service founded in 1948 was inspired by a self-help system which Aneurin Bevan had participated in as a young man. After working as a coal miner in South Wales, he served on the hospital committee of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society which ran hospitals and convalescent homes for miners as well as employing family doctors and even providing benefits for the dependants of the members. Later as a Labour MP for Ebbw Vale he took up the idea which was familiar to him and, as […]

Supply Chains in Capitalism Today: From Foxconn to Wal-Mart

By Randell Brantley
Date: Thursday 27th June Time: 7.30-9.30pm Location: Hydra Books, 34 Old Market St, Bristol, BS2 0EZ Price: Donation Speaker: Gifford Hartman Supply Chains in Capitalism Today: From Foxconn to Wal-Mart One of the forms in which the working class exists today is at the various nodal points along global commodity chains. Global production is based on a system of "factories without walls," where increasingly components are manufactured using an inventory-less subcontracting system that races around […]

Section: Blog

Subjects: Class

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Kenya, at last?

So (finally) the UK government has been legally forced to pay £19.9 million compensation to 5,228 victims of torture, rape, sexual abuse and maiming by British colonial forces during the ‘Mau Mau’ rebellion in Keyna in the 1950s. The compensation works out be a pitiful ‘£3,000 per victim and applies only to the living survivors of the abuses that took place’. The pure number of victims suggests that the argument normally trotted out by the British state in these situations, that is, ‘a bad […]

Tolpuddle And Captain Swing: Hidden History?

In 1834, six Dorset farm labourers were condemned to transportation to Australia for forming an early trade union. These 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' have become an iconic part of modern British history. But three years before the events in Tolpuddle, rural England was rocked with a massive upr1sing of farm labourers known as the 'Swing Riots'. Dr. Ball analyses why 'Tolpuddle' has lodged in popular memory and the far more significant events of 'Swing' have been distorted and forgotten. W.l. Hall, North […]