Marge Evans: The Radcliffe Radical – film screening with director David Parker

Tues 28 Nov - 2.00-3.00pm Bedminster Library: 4 Bedminster Parade, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 4AQ ‘During the depression I used to knock on a door and borrow a chair to stand in so I could speak at a street corner meeting - I’m not very tall you see’ That was Marge Evans talking about how she organised and spoke at public meetings to campaign for workers’ rights in the 1930s depression, she was in her early 20s at the time. Marge lived though some of the most momentous political events in the 20th […]

Dare Devil Rides to Jarama

DARE DEVIL RIDES TO JARAMA
A new play by Townsend Productions (the people who brought you United We Stand, a play about the Shrewsbury pickets) speedway, the wall of death and the Spanish Civil War - DARE DEVIL RIDES TO JARAMA. To you we speak, you numberless Englishmen, To remind you of the greatness still among you Created by these men who go from your towns To fight for peace, for liberty and for you. Clem Beckett and Christopher Caudwell were such men. Moved by most Spaniards’ determination to defend themselves […]

Ready for Revolution

The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona 1933-38

By Agustín Guillamón
Translated by Paul Sharkey Morpheus: ‘I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo, I just said it would be the truth’ I remember seeing Frederica Montseny speak in Barcelona in 1986 for the 50th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution. I was on holiday with Ian Bone and our girlfriends and as we looked up at Montseny I remember Ian slagging her off and being a bit embarrassed that this ‘brave’ woman who must have been through so much was not getting the respect she deserved. Of course at the time I was a […]

THIRTEEN ROSES ….. AND 43 CARNATIONS

Translation by Diarmuid Breatnach; original version published in Spanish in Rafael Narbona’s blog August 2013, also republished by kind permission in Rebel Breeze. On the morning of August 5th 1939 thirteen women were shot dead against the walls of the Eastern Madrid Cemetery. Nine were minors, because at that time the age of majority was not reached until twenty-one. Ranging in age from 18 to 29, all had been brought from the Sales women’s prison, a prison that was designed for 450 people and […]

Running down Whitehall with a black flag

Running down Whitehall with a black flag. Memories of anarchism in the 1960s Di Parkin was a revolutionary activist from the early 1960s to the 1980s. She was employed as a community worker and an Equal Opportunities Adviser. Her PhD was on opposition to the myth of National Unity in Second World War Britain and she published a book on the history of a militant coal mine (Betteshanger) in Kent Now retired, she devotes most of her energy to the Bristol Radical History group: working on recording […]

Libres: Songs of the Spanish Revolution

Pilar Lopez’s performance about the Spanish Social Revolution of 1936 aims to draw inspiration from these amazing times, sharing the beauty and relevance of those events and making links with what's currently happening in Spain. In 1936, after a partially unsuccessful military coup and by popular demand, the libertarian unions took control of the organisation of society in many parts of Spain. In no time large portions of land and industry had been collectivised and belonged to the workers. This […]

The Friends of Durruti and the Maydays in Barcelona (1937)

Miscellaneous 2012
This week marks the 75th anniversary of the 'Barcelona Maydays' an uprising in response to the Republican Government's attempt to seize power in revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Tensions had been building over several months between the anarcho-syndicalist CNT membership and the Soviet controlled Republican army which centred on the questions of militarisation and 'War or Revolution'? When armed 'Communist Party' units attacked the Telephone exchange in Barcelona, thousands […]

Prof. Preston and George Orwell: The varieties of historical investigation and experience

Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Radical History Zone 2011 Poster
A couple of years ago, at a gathering of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, Professor Paul Preston, describing George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, said: 'It is not a bad book but the trouble is, it is the only book many people read on the Spanish Civil War' or words to that effect. Pro. Preston suggested that 'Homage to Catalonia' was a book written about the Spanish War from the narrow perspective of someone who had only spent six or seven months involved in the conflict on a quiet […]

Remember the Spanish Brigaders

The memorial to the four Bristol volunteers who joined the International Brigades to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War in Castle Park is to be surrounded by a vivid mosiac border in Republican colours and will be unveiled at 12 noon on 14th April - the anniversary of the day the Republic was declared in 1931. BRISTOL BRIGADERS William G. Boyce Jan. 20th 1938 Teruel William J. Burton Feb. 1937 Jarama Leslie Huson May 1938 Pneumonia, died in hospital. Terence Edward Stephens July 1938 Died in […]

Pin It on Pinterest