Not A BRHG Event
Professor of Modern British History, June Hannam shares the inspiring journey of Annie Townley, a Lancashire textile worker turned suffragette and Labour Party organiser. This talk highlights the challenges and opportunities for working-class women in activism, focusing on Townley’s personal and emotional struggles within the suffrage and labour movements. It has been arranged by the Bristol Radical History Group.
The fight for union rights. In the early twentieth century, workers could be sacked by their employer with impunity simply because they had joined a trade union. Such was the situation for those who worked on Bristol’s trams. In Trouble on the Trams, Rob Whitfield recounts how the drivers and conductors fought back when nearly one hundred of their number were dismissed in 1901. Using contemporary newspaper reports and the company’s own records, he details this dispute and those that were to […]
Not A BRHG Event
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. […]
In the summer of 1901 the Bristol Tramways Company sacked 90 employees who had recently joined the Gasworkers’ and General Labourers’ Union. Another 300 tramways employees went on strike in support of their dismissed fellow workers. This action by the Tramways Company was a direct challenge to the trade union movement in Bristol and beyond, and the wider labour movement rallied in support of the tramwaymen. The company threw all the resources they had into defeating the union and were ultimately […]
Not A BRHG Event
Engine Shed, Station Approach, Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH Marking the 150th Anniversary of the Bristol Trades Union Council, Bristol Radical History Group will be launching 150 Years of Struggle, the history of the Council at the Engine Shed, Temple Meads. In 1973, Bristol Trades Union Council marked its centenary year. David Large and Bob Whitfield wrote its history for the Bristol Historical Association (BHA) and BBC Bristol screened 100 Years of Struggle, a film produced by the […]
Meet: 2.00pm Ropewalk pub - 5 Nelson Parade, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 4JA Come with us on a journey through time and space in Bedminster, Victoria Park and Windmill Hill... This two hour history walk uncovers the radical political groups and individuals active in Bedminster in the pre-WWI and post-war periods, the strikes and trade union actions of the growing labour movement and how these networks of activists combined to resist the war. We also look at the changing nature of the area and the […]
Charles Fletcher: Gypsy, Orphan, Forest of Dean Miner and Socialist
In this article, the short life of Charles Fletcher is used as a lens to explore aspects of the labour movement in Chepstow and the Forest of Dean in the early twentieth century. It starts with Fletcher’s experiences as an orphan in Bristol and ends with his early death following his role as a witness in one of the most sensational murder trials of the 1920s.
Swords into Ploughshares (60min, 2018) is an edited version of The Plan, a documentary made by Steve Sprung. It tells the story of how and why Lucas Aerospace workers in the 1970s evolved a Corporate Plan to change their output from those that serviced the armaments industry to socially useful products like kidney machines, heat pumps and wind turbines. An excellent film exposing a hidden history of great relevance for today. A compliment to the talk by Andy Danford.
