This Is Forever is excited to announce three New York City events with the Bristol Radical HIstory Group, on Thursday NOVEMBER 12th, Friday NOVEMBER 13th and Sunday NOVEMBER 15th.
Since 2006 Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) have organised nearly 100 history events; staging walks, talks, gigs, reconstructions, films, exhibitions, trips through the archives and fireside story telling. We also publish a range of pamphlets and host a comprehensive website (http://www.brh.org.uk).
Brecht Forum
Thursday, November 12th @ 7:30PM
Bristol Radical History Group: Radical History ‘From Below’
451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets
New York, NY 10014
The ‘History Workshop’ movement was founded in 1966 in Ruskin College, Oxford, U.K. by the Marxist academic Raphael Samuel, a champion of ‘history from below.’ He famously defined this movement as being “the belief that history is or ought to be a collaborative enterprise, one in which the researcher, the archivist, the curator and the teacher, the ‘do-it-yourself’ enthusiast and the local historian, the family history societies and the individual archaeologist, should all be regarded as
equally engaged.”
In 2006 in the U.K., Bristol Radical History Group was formed with a view opening up some of the hidden history of their home city to public scrutiny, to challenge some commonly held ideas about historical events and approach this history from ‘below’. Unlike Samuel’s ‘History Workshop,’ the group actually came ‘from below’ its genesis being in an expanded sports club rather than in the academy. As a result it has been able to successfully integrate both the formal lecture with street performance, the organic intellectual with the academic and engage the public in the excitement of radical history by the use of different media.
Members of Bristol Radical History Group will be outlining the influences that inspired their project from E.P.Thompson to punk rock, describing their forays into the battles over the historical representations of their city from slavery to labour history and looking to the future of radical history from ‘below’. So if you want to find out what unites a 17th Century blasphemous preacher and some drunken Can-Can dancers this is the event for you.
16 Beaver Group
Friday, November 13th @ 4PM – 9PM
Bristol Radical History Group: Why History Matters and Why Radical History Matters More
16 Beaver Street, 4th fl.
New York, NY 10004
An afternoon/evening of lectures, presentations and discussion presented by Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) emphasising the importance and relevance of radical history. Using a diverse series of historical case studies the speakers will demonstrate the various interventions BRHG have made into their local and national histories including: uncovering hidden histories / challenging established narratives / questioning previous generations of ‘radical history’ / linking new narratives and critiques with current struggles.
Case studies include:
‘A Barbarous and Ungovernable People’: The Miners of Kingswood Forest: Steve Mills explains the nature of the commons and the content of ‘commoning’ by studying the English forest and its rebellious inhabitants. Focusing on Kingswood (east of Bristol) between the 17th and 19th centuries he examines the moral economy of the native colliers, their struggles against enclosure and the attempts by the authorities to pacify the area.
‘From Peterloo to Captain Swing’: Victims or Insurgents?: Roger Wilson critiques received ‘radical’ narratives of enfranchisement and the formation of Trade Unions in Britain by focusing on the hidden history of uprising and insurrection in the early 19th Century. Why have some events been ignored or denigrated and others been championed by the left and the labour movement?
‘Votes for Ladies’: The Suffragette Movement 1903-1914: An examination of the established narrative of the struggle for the enfranchisement of women. Anny Cullum critiques the composition and outlook of this iconic movement from a class perspective.
‘My Holiday Snaps’: The Indian Enclosures: Richard Grove presents an illustrated talk charting the Adivasi’s and Dalits’ struggle to protect their land from the encroachments sponsored by industry and the World Bank in a contemporary world-wide wave of enclosures.
Bluestockings Bookstore
Sunday, November 15th @ 7PM
Bristol Radical History Group: History as Inquiry and Militant Research
172 Allen Street
New York, NY 10002
Since 2006 Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) have organised a bewildering range of history events; staging walks, talks, gigs, reconstructions, films, exhibitions, trips through the archives and fireside story telling. Tonight, the Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) will give an account of its own formation as a group, the arc of their activities in Bristol and beyond, as well as how the methods and techniques employed in their history from below relates to practices of militant research.
Bristol Radical History Group member Dan Bennett will also present “A History of Commercial Corporations”, in which he exposes the hidden and chequered history of the Corporation explaining in the process what corporations are, where they come from and how they derive their power.
Events sponsored by ‘This is Forever’: From Inquiry to Refusal’, an event and discussion series dedicated to understanding the current composition of political movements and struggles using the lens of autonomist thought. For more information, please see www.thisisforever.org