Bristol Radical History Group
Since 2006 BRHG have organised over 250 events; staging walks, talks, gigs, recreations, films, exhibitions, trips through the archives and fireside story telling. We have several active research projects, publish a range of books and pamphlets and host an archive on this website.
BRHG projects and events are organised by local people from Bristol and are NOT funded by universities, political parties, business or local government. To break even we rely on members giving their labour for free, donations from the audiences and the sale of publications.
BRHG are associated with several other history groups in Bristol including Remembering the Real World War One, Eastville Workhouse Memorial Group and the Counter-Colston Group. BRHG have also recently become a member of the International History From Below Network.
New Book: Hugh Holmes Gore
New Book: The Enigma of Hugh Holmes Gore: Bristol’s Nineteenth Century Christian Socialist Solicitor. As a radical solicitor he gained a national reputation during the 1893 defence of Walsall anarchists on trial for a bomb plot instigated by a police agent. In 1898 Gore vanished under mysterious circumstances. His friends’ comments suggest a scandal, most probably because of his sexual attraction to men at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence. Read More...
Have you a Conchie in the family?
Dozens of men from Bristol were imprisoned as conscientious objectors during World War 1. Are you related to any of them? Read more...
100 Fishponds Road
100 Fishponds Rd. Life and Death in a Victorian Workhouse. The research that found out about the 4000 people buried in unmarked graves at the Eastville Workhouse burial ground. The second edition is now available. Order yours now.
Recent Books
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What does the Italian/ American mafia, the Italian Communist Party, Cary Grant, Field Marshal Tito, the KGB, and a McGriffin TV have in common? Well read this book and you will […] More
Eric Hobsbawn: Socialist Historian
This publication by The Socialist History Society is a record of a special event in 2013 to celebrate and assess the work of the late Marxist and historian, Professor Eric […] More
Angela Remembered
Rosie MacGregor remembers Angela, that is Angela Gradwell Tuckett (1906-1994); a stalwart Communist, an all-round radical and something of a Renaissance woman. I’ll call her simply […] More
A Girl Among the Anarchists
From its advent as a modern worldview anarchism was always too pure a faith to be properly judged by the conduct of its adherents and practitioners. Or so it would seem from A Girl […] More
City Under Fire
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 […] More
Central Labour College
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 […] More
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday not only draws upon the historic stigmatisation of anarchists but also self-consciously explores and develops the caricature. The novel […] More
A Child of the Jago
Arthur Morrison’s 1890’s novel A Child of the Jago is set in the slum courts of London’s East End. Life in the Jago is a Hobbesian war of all against all, a socialist Darwinist […] More
Anarchy In A Cold War
Anarchy In A Cold War is set in divided Berlin in 1981. But Berlin is far more divided than just the Cold War divisions of East and West. The book centres on the squatter culture […] More
The Nightmare Trail
Scenes from the Life of Poet and War Casualty: FW Harvey The poet FW Harvey (1886-1957) spent the last thirty years of his life in Yorkley in the Forest of Dean. I was brought up […] More
Dreaming A City
This book describes the making of the 1991 TV documentary ‘Hughesovka and the New Russia, Dreaming a City’ created by the author and the Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams. Focusing […] More
Charles Booth’s Policemen
The recorded crime rate in the East End of London fell during the period of 1875 until 1900. The rate of common assaults, aggravated assaults, and assaults on the police fell from […] More
Recent Articles
Walter Ayles
If I believed in the efficacy of slaughter to remedy evils, I would long ago have advocated the killing of those who, year after year, have been responsible for the sweated, the […] More
100 Fishponds Road
In 2015, the Eastville Workhouse Memorial Group unveiled a memorial for the 4,084 paupers buried in a mass grave at Rosemary Green. We follow them and the Bristol Radical History […] More
What we did on our summer holidays…#1
The annual Fete d'Humanitie originally began in 1930 as a fund raiser for the Communist newspaper L'Humanitie. It was the idea of the editor of the paper in Paris and attracted […] More
The Rosemary Green Memorial
On this site over 4000 men, women and children who died in Eastville Workhouse, known as 100 Fishponds Road, were buried in unmarked graves. A further 118 were given to the medical […] More
Eastville Workhouse memorial unveiling programme
This is a copy of the programme handed out at the Eastville Workhouse burail ground memorial unveiling 16/11/2015. Download the programme here... More
Colston and slavery still obscured?
At last year’s Merchant Venturers Charter Day service at the cathedral the Bishop of Bristol, stated that Edward Colston had: lived a life of significance... [and there]... may be […] More
From the Young Patriots to the Rainbow Coalition
Introduction The last twenty years or so have seen a wave of publications recounting and examining the history of the New Left and radical Black, Latino and Native American […] More
The Lawbreakers
A BBC film from 1973 about the squatting movement in Bristol. See also Mac McConnell's talk "Housing Activism and Squatting in 1970’s Bristol" at the 2015 Anarchist Bookfair. More
Gallipoli and Bristol
The horses, the horses, we couldn't get the horses off the beach; we should not have been there A British veteran of Gallipoli In the Autumn of 1914 a number of men from Bristol […] More
Arrowsmith and the ‘Bristol Revolution’ of 1831
I was fortunate enough to acquire, among a collection of books, both the 1884 and the considerably expanded 1906 edition of Arrowsmith’s Dictionary of Bristol, edited by Henry J. […] More
Do You Have A Conchie In The Family?
From 1916-19 many men & women in Bristol organised opposition to conscription. Dozens of Bristolians were imprisoned as conscientious objectors. These included Walter Ayles, […] More
Recent Pamphlets
The Enigma of Hugh Holmes Gore
The Anglo – Catholic convert to the left, Hugh Holmes Gore, was a key figure in Bristol’s labour movement during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Gore linked Clifton […] More
The Maltreated and the Malcontents
The history of Bristol’s Great Western Cotton Works in Barton Hill, which opened in 1838, is little known. The story of its workforce — mainly low-paid women and children — has […] More
Slaughter No Remedy
Walter Ayles was a fighter – but a fighter who didn’t believe in killing. He fought against unemployment and ruthless employers but also against the pro-war fever that led to the […] More
The Life and Death of Hannah Wiltshire
During the year of 1855 rumours of murder and cover up were circulating in the small north Somerset village of Walton-in-Gordano. An epileptic destitute country girl had died in […] More
100 Fishponds Rd.
2nd Edition. Revised and substantially expanded. In 2012 some radical historians poring over old maps of East Bristol came across a disused burial ground at Rosemary Green close to […] More
The Bristol Deserter
The years leading up to 1914 saw a wave of strike action across Britain; at the same time there were fears of war with Germany whipped up by the press and in popular culture. Some […] More
Class Cohesion versus Spurious Patriotism
With a new afterword by Kevin Morgan. A 2015 reprint of a 1915 pamphlet, originally published at the height of reaction during World War One. Proposing class struggle and […] More
Strikers, Hobblers, Conchies & Reds
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 […] More
Poaching in the South West
Poaching is known in some quarters as the 2nd oldest profession and defined as the taking of wild animals without the landowners consent. Here lies a significant problem: how could […] More
Bristol Independent Labour Party
During World War One a significant minority of women and men throughout the country took part in a peace movement. They demanded the democratic control of foreign policy, a […] More
Coal On One Hand, Men On The Other
The following resolutions were passed at a meeting of Forest of Dean Miners at Speech House in August 1917. “That we, the Forest of Dean Miners, enter our most emphatic protest […] More
The Cock Road Gang
Cock Road was, in the 18th Century, a tiny little hamlet on the outskirts of Bristol. However, the exploits of the inhabitants brought it to the attention of the authorities of […] More
Recent Events
Deserters, Conchies and Mutineers
Ringleaders and Reds in Khaki - British Army mutinies during the First World War British Military historians and assorted flag-wavers celebrate the enthusiastic rush to the […] More
Smoke, Gas, Strikes, Metal and Slums
Meet at Bristol Temple Meads station forecourt. Well over 50 people turned up when we put on this walk in July. It was so popular we’re doing it again. So if you enjoyed it so much […] More
Abolitionists in Bristol
According to historians of the slave-trade in Bristol there were 'precious few' Abolitionists in the city - but at least there were some and not just in the 18th and 19th […] More
Smoke: Gas: Strikes: Metal: Slums
A 2 hour walk around St Philips and the Dings. Alfred Jefferies lived in St Philips before 1914, he was shot for desertion in France On 1st November 1916. We will walk around the […] More
Battle Of The Somme
At the Watershed, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol, BS1 5TX. 1 July 1916 was the first day of the battle of the Somme. That day saw the highest British casualties of any day in […] More
Slaughter No Remedy
A re-enactment of Walter Ayles' Militry Tribunal Bristol Register Office, Corn Street, BS1 1JG. Walter Ayles was Bristol’s most prominent opponent of World War 1. He was a member […] More
Discovering British 1914-1918 War Resisters
Cyril Pearce is Britain's foremost researcher into World War 1 conscientious objectors (COs) and war resisters. His book 'Comrades in Conscience' looked at the anti-war movement in […] More
Escape was on Everyone’s Mind
Paper theatre by Otherstory at Southbank, Dean Lane, Bristol BS3 1DB. See how an ordinary apprentice carpenter became the legendary jail breaker and hero of the people. Witness his […] More
Captain Jack White DSO
Captain Jack White DSO attracted adjectives like jam does wasps - flamboyant, gallant, romantic, handsome, idiosyncratic, incorrigible - and every one of them was appropriate. He […] More
Bristol May Day
The Haymarket, Chicago and Mayday On the evening of Tuesday May 4th 1886 near the Haymarket, Chicago, armed police attempted to violently disperse a few hundred members of a […] More
The Red Dagger
Live performance of poem by Heathcote Williams The Red Dagger: the symbol of the City of London's treachery and oppression, paraded about in plain sight for 700 years; but who […] More
The Real Conspiracy
It is 44 years since the first-ever national building workers strike in Britain. Five months after the strike ended, 24 pickets were picked up and charged with over 200 offences, […] More