Angela Carter's 'Provincial Bohemia' - Stephen E Hunt

ANGELA CARTER'S 'PROVINCIAL BOHEMIA' -
THE COUNTERCULTURE IN 1960s AND 1970s BRISTOL AND BATH -
STEPHEN E HUNT

Fascinating and genuinely so on many levels. Stephen E Hunt's Angela Carter's 'Provincial Bohemia' - The Counterculture in 1960s and 1970s Bristol and Bath is a unique insight not only into renowned novelist Angela Carter's life of which she spent twelve years of it during the Sixties and Seventies living in Bristol and Bath but more so into the radical and artistic countercultures that flourished in the two cities during that period.

Between 1961 and 1969 Carter lived in the Clifton area of Bristol, in a ground floor flat on Royal York Crescent and then following this between 1973 and 1976 she lived in Bath. Her time in Bristol was arguably her most productive and was where she found her writerly voice, whilst her time in Bath was when she was arguably at her peak as a writer.

Clifton is a place that every Bristolian has an opinion of. It's the area in Bristol that has always been associated with wealth and prosperity and it's where you'll find some of the biggest and most expensive properties. For some it's the area they aspire to live in one day whilst for others it symbolizes nothing less than class division and wealth disparity. Within Clifton itself there is an additional aspect to it that acts as another clear dividing line, that being whether you own the property there or are renting. And if you own a property there is a further division of whether you come from 'old' money or 'new' money and if you rent, if this is privately or from a housing association.

People don't tend to pay much attention to nuance, however, so for most Clifton is simply posh and rich but this works both ways, meaning that if you move into the area you can adopt a position of privilege if not one of splendid isolation even if you're neither posh or rich.

During the early 1980s there was some graffiti on a wall in St Paul's that read 'I'm bored of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll, let's go up Clifton and smash it up'. Whenever a riot might occur in Bristol there was a similar underlying whisper that said rather than damage be caused to the local community, to go mob-handed instead to Clifton and cause damage there. And when a riot would occur in St Paul's for example, those up in the Clifton heights would peer down upon it with but one thought in their minds: that the rioting remain in St Paul's and for it not to travel.

Language, as William Burroughs once observed, is a virus and so too I would argue is radicalism be it in the form of politics or culture, meaning it will traverse and mutate. Countercultures know no boundaries be that of class, wealth or geography which is why in a place like Bristol an idea born from a cultural tangent in Clifton might be picked up in the outer council estates of Hartcliffe and Southmead or the inner city of St Paul's and ran with -  and vice versa. It's called cross-cultural pollination and it's this very thing that Angela Carter tuned into during her stay in Bristol.

Carter's involvement with the 'provincial bohemianism' of the book's title began with her support for nuclear disarmament and a commitment to CND along with an enthusiasm for folk music. The relationship between the peace movement and the folk revival in the 1960s was mutually inspirational, both being well represented in Clifton. Along with a number of clubs and venues sympathetic to hosting folk nights around the Clifton area there were also a significant amount of pubs where the new bohemians of the period would meet. It was these clubs and pubs that Carter would frequent and from where she drew a lot of material and inspiration for her first books. One of the most prominent of these places being The Berkeley opposite the museum on Queen's Road where Carter would meet and chat to various local situationists and anarchists.

This is where Stephen E Hunt's book gets really interesting. Was The Berkeley a regular haunt for Bristol anarchists during the 1960s? It's a venue I used to personally go to myself during the 1980s to see all kinds of wonderful punk and post punk bands from the Angelic Upstarts, Killing Joke, the Fire Engines to the Polecats. It was never a well-known venue in the slightest and actually seemed at times as if it was in fact a somewhat secret venue. To know that it was also a place where local anarchists and situationists would hang out in the Sixties adds further to its near-secret history.

Mention of this in the book gives rise to a quote from a long-term friend of Angela Carter's in regard to Bristol being an important place for anarchists back then, with even arch anarchist and would-be Franco assassin Stuart Christie staying for some time. This connection to Bristol anarchists allows Hunt to then explore the tangents, off-shoots and cross-pollination of this nascent hippy/alternative/bohemian scene of which Carter herself might also have explored dependent upon the timeline: The 1968 student occupation of Bristol University's Senate House, for example. The Bristol Free Festival of 1971 held on Clifton Downs, organised by a group calling themselves The Bristol Dwarves with links to the Provos and Kabouters of The Netherlands. The Bristol Women's Liberation Group, the Bath Arts Workshop, and Comtek. 

All of these things went into forming a West Country counterculture, a 'provincial Bohemia' that though not on the same scale at all as what was going on in Haight Ashbury, Amsterdam or Notting Hill during the same period was certainly on the same page. The kind of things that Angela Carter if not directly involving herself with would have observed and been privy to discussions of, subsequently going on to influence and inform her writing.

If it was ever even the intention, it must be said these things in themselves emanating from the Clifton area of Bristol and the Walcot area of Bath that fed into the counterculture failed to change the world in any obvious and concrete way. Using Angela Carter as an example, however, very subtly they influenced. They echoed, travelled, traversed and cross-pollinated. Spreading out from epicenters subliminally like fractal strands of Chaos Theory. Like William Butler Yeats' gyres. Like tributaries feeding into larger rivers before entering the sea. 

This is what Stephen E Hunt's book is about and though it may not quite be the definitive book on the subject it's certainly an important one. Angela Carter's 'Provincial Bohemia' is a genuinely interesting and fascinating account of what went on up in Clifton in Bristol and out at Walcot in Bath during the Sixties and early Seventies with the repercussions of it still to this day echoing.

John Serpico

Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 - Steve Hunt

 ANARCHISM IN BRISTOL AND

THE WEST COUNTRY TO 1950 -

STEVE HUNT

Another radical pamphlet/booklet from the Bristol Radical History Group and if I had my way I'd happily read the lot of them but unfortunately the world we live is not yet a perfect one so I read them instead in dribs and drabs on the basis of when one happens to fall into my hands. This particular one by Steve Hunt entitled Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 piqued my interest because Bristol - much to my delight but much to the chagrin of such people as Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees - has a reputation for being a radical city. A reputation for some for even being a city of rioting anarchist mobs storming police stations and pulling down statues of benefactors in a bid to wreck havoc upon its cultural heritage. It's true, these things have happened though not nearly as often enough as I personally would like to see. There's also another slant, of course, on Bristol's radical reputation as being a city of 'woke' nightmares where same sex toilets without doors are the norm and where if you don't identify as being gay then you're just plain weird. Or something like that.

How to write seriously about something that's beyond parody? Like the anti-vaxxers during the Covid lockdown who would protest, saying they wanted their freedom back. Freedom for what, exactly? To go shopping? To go back to how it was before lockdown when everyone and everything was so very free? Like the Brexiteers saying they want their country back. Back to those happier times when England ruled the waves? When there were just three black-and-white television channels, pubs closed at 10.30 and jolly policemen would give scallywags a clip 'round the ear for stealing apples?

It's all to do with perception, really. Perception and hegemony and how that bleeds into everyday life. If you believe for example that England is ruled by a Left-wing Deep State cabal and that the BBC is its main arm of propaganda then apart from Liz Truss you're on your own, as others edge slowly away from you in the same way they'd edge away from a knife-wielding lunatic. If you think freedom is defined by how good your shopping experience is then you're the perfect consumer - and that's your lot in life. If you think there's no longer such a thing as free speech isn't what you mean that you can't say things anymore without being potentially challenged? Or as comedian Stewart Lee put it: 'You can't even be a Nazi nowadays without being accused of being a Nazi. It's woke gone mad.'

So, to Bristol and its reputation for being a radical city. There was a time not so very long ago when Bristol's public profile was managed by Bristol City Council and the city's local newspaper, the Bristol Evening Post, working always in conjunction with each other within pretty strict and somewhat conservative parameters. For the Evening Post, news was just stuff to fill the spaces between the advertisements because ultimately it was all to do with revenue. That news was supplied by the City Council's press office and by the police via their press office, supplemented by the Evening Post's own roving reporters reporting on cats stuck up trees and other such items of interest.

Of course, anything coming from any press office is going to be slanted, biased and one-sided, and if printed verbatim or rinsed through a conservative editorial policy then essentially it's all the equivalent of propaganda for the authorities and the status quo, presented as 'news' in 'The paper all Bristol asked for and helped to create'.

The only answer to this monopolization of how the public and private spheres are depicted is to somehow present and offer an alternative view but by default because that view is going to fall outside of the consensus it's going to be classed as 'radical' even if it's nothing of the sort. And as we know, from 'radical' to 'extreme' is just a very short jump.

When trying to present an alternative you use whatever tools and means available be that public meetings, pamphleteering, the publishing of newspapers and books, etc, etc. Anything to challenge the 'common sense' values and politics of the dominant culture. It's a contest that has been raging since time immemorial and in hindsight its quite inexplicable how the power to define the world and dictate its values has been controlled for so long by the conservative Right. 

In Bristol, that power has always been concentrated in just a few albeit very strong institutions all channeled through its local media. There's been many challenges to that power over the years but all deftly dealt with by cutting them off at the head though in the last few decades - whether by accident or design it matters not - there's been a change of tactic with more of a 'many-headed Hydra' approach coming into play. It's still an on-going process with no end in sight as of yet but this new approach involving music, film, physical media, the Internet and social media has without question upset the apple cart leading to Bristol's current 'radical city' reputation.

It goes without saying there's going to be distortions, exaggerations, plain untruths and counter attacks where any alternative is going to be misrepresented and cast as the proverbial 'woke nightmare' but the important thing with all this is that it's in motion. The hand is off the brake. The genie is out the bottle. The cat is out the bag. The train has now left the station and as an old friend of mine would often put it, it's now full steam ahead through the shit.

Which brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and the part they have played - and are still playing - with their slew of publications. Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 admittedly starts on rather shaky ground by suggesting modern anarchism was started by Edmund Burke whose statue can be found on Broad Quay, in Bristol. It's stretching it a bit and the author probably knows this but it makes at least for an interesting claim, particularly as by doing so it puts Bristol at the centre of all things anarchist. Burke was a Bristol MP in the 1770s but it wasn't until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon proclaimed himself an anarchist in the 1840s that the actual history of anarchism is said to have begun. Up until Proudhon's declaration, the term 'anarchist' was an insult, used to disparage. Proudhon, however, tied his name to the mast proudly.

It wasn't until the 1880s that an explicitly anarchist movement started to appear in England so that's quite a leap between Burke, Proudhon and such people as William Morris visiting Bristol in 1885 to give a talk at the City Museum that the Evening Post amusingly dismissed as 'pernicious nonsense'. No change there then from the Post. A meeting was also attended in 1889 at St James' Hall in Cumberland Street in Bristol by none other than Peter Kropotkin. This is really all the evidence needed to show that for anarchist ideas during this period it was the lift-off point.

Steve Hunt traces a line from Bristolians such as Edward Carpenter, Helena Born and Miriam Daniell, Gertrude Dix and George Barrett all the way to the one-time 'most dangerous woman in America' Emma Goldman visiting Bristol in 1925 to give talks at Bristol's YMCA and the Folk House, on Park Street, staying at a house in Redland. This lineage that Steve Hunt traces is an important one as it's people who over the course of Bristol's history have in their own way all added to how Bristol is today. 

Of course, these people have by and large been ignored by those who have always plotted and recorded the history of Bristol, or when not ignored have been cast by the powers that be and the powers that have been as 'pernicious' or 'extremist'. Rather than having them remain as denigrated figures Steve Hunt raises them instead to their rightful positions, that being as heroes one and all, and in the process providing a valuable and important service to the city.

Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 isn't a definitive book on the subject but it's a good stepping stone for the curious of mind to investigate further. And stepping stones are what it's always been about, be it the potential stepping stone of a guest speaker at a public meeting, the potential stepping stones of writing a pamphlet, a book or an article, the potential stepping stone of singing a song, or even the definite stepping stone of a full blown riot. All stepping stones to somewhere over the rainbow.

John Serpico

The Forest of Dean Miners' Riot of 1831 - Chris Fisher

 THE FOREST OF DEAN MINERS' RIOT OF 1831 -

CHRIS FISHER

No historian I and no academic either. Me? I left school at age 16 and never went to University. Not that I claim this as a virtue or that I plead ignorance as I'm actually pretty well read, if I might say so myself. 'Libraries gave us power' as the Manic Street Preachers once sang and it's a truism that working people have always been great readers and subsequently self-educators. Autodidacts, in other words.

'We will bargain but we won't beg' as RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch recently said in regard to the train strikes and in a similar fashion working people won't be denied what is theirs, meaning when it comes to education if they're not given a decent one then they will educate themselves. Likewise with their history, as in they won't live their lives between the parameters of what others have set, nor will they be defined by the accumulation and interpretation of past lives and events that have nothing to do with them. Working people will have their own history and they will not only read of it on their own terms but will also write it, which rather neatly brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and their series of books, number 50 being The Forest Of Dean Miners' Strike Of 1831 by Chris Fisher.

In June of 1831, the free miners and commoners of the Forest of Dean rioted and according to the scant accounts available the rioters were 'silly, deluded, mistaken and misled'. Those accounts, however, were written by newspaper correspondents and magistrates so hardly indicative of an unbiased appraisal. Unless there is an on-the-spot reporter to witness such events, to this day and even more so back then, information is always supplied by the police or officialdom so it's always one-sided. This is how 'official' history is written and recorded but as with everything there are always two sides to every story.

Fisher tells us of a stand-off between the miners of the Forest led by a miner called Warren James and the Forest resident officers of the Crown led by the Deputy Surveyor of the Forest and magistrate Edward Machen. For years whole sections of the Forest had been locked up behind gates and fences and claimed as Crown property but come the summer of 1831 these enclosures were challenged and started to be destroyed, with Warren James posting notices around the Forest announcing the opening up of the enclosures and the right of common ownership.

On meeting with Warren James, Machen demanded to know under what authority would the miners open up the Forest? James declined to engage with Machen and instead produced an enormous pick-axe and along with 80 other miners began to break down the fences. This was the only voucher of privilege James and his fellow miners required and in the British history of those governed and governed-by it was a decisive and historic moment.

Machen read the Riot Act but was studiously ignored as the miners set about - in a very peaceful and methodical manner, it must be said - pulling down the fences. Humiliated, Machen had no other option but to leave, abandoning the Forest to the so-called 'mob' who as word spread was quickly joined by others in the liberation. Machen returned the next day with a makeshift group of soldiers only to be met by jeers and derision. Popular support for the opening up of the Forest was evident so once again Machen beat a retreat only to return again two days later with a much more considerable force of men in the form of a squadron of heavily armed Dragoons accompanied by 'every magistrate and gentleman of influence in the neighbourhood'. Under threat of massive violence, this time it was the turn of the miners and commoners to flee with Warren James being arrested and though spared the death penalty, being transported for life to Tasmania as a lesson and warning to others.

All in all it's a little known but interesting story that is actually an echo of other events throughout British history, even of the most recent kind. It's remindful, for example, of the 1980 St Paul's riot in Bristol where that area of the city was abandoned by the police after them being chased out by the mob, only for the police to return in much greater force to take it back. It's remindful of the 1985 so-called Battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge where police used massive violence against ordinary men, women and children in a bid to prevent that year's free festival taking place. Even more recently, it's remindful of the 2021 Kill The Bill occupations and protests outside of Bristol's Bridewell Police Station and on Bristol's College Green where police violently ejected protestors, leading to excessive jail sentences for riot. There's an obvious pattern here.

My only criticism of Chris Fisher's book - though it's more of an observation, really - is in regard to when and how a riot is defined as such? As Fisher points out, 'the rioters worked in an orderly and disciplined manner' and 'offered no personal violence and indeed confined themselves wholly to the destruction of the fences', working 'in the same way as they would have worked at anything else'. So what, why, how and by whom was it defined and declared as a riot? The answer is by the magistrate Edward Machen through his reading out of the Riot Act, done so in a bid to disperse the miners.

Likewise in regard to the St Paul's riot of 1980, known and classed as a riot though if you were to ask the actual residents of St Paul's they would tell you it wasn't a riot but an uprising. The Battle of the Beanfield in 1985 on the other hand wasn't actually a battle in the slightest - it was a police riot though it's never called out as such. And then the Kill The Bill protests of 2021 in Bristol where those arrested are still being charged with 'Riot' and being handed lengthy prison sentences. Was it a riot or a protest and when does one become another anyway?  In this instance it would have been the police who arrested people under the Public Order Act but then charged them with 'Riot' but unlike magistrate Edward Machen they didn't at the time read out the Riot Act. So, protesters were arrested on one thing and then charged on another all on the whim of the police, their decision being more than likely influenced and informed by political pressure with the sentences meted out serving as lessons and warnings to others - just like Warren James being transported for life to Tasmania.

History it would seem repeats itself. And those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

John Serpico

The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 - Mike Richardson

THE BRISTOL STRIKE WAVE OF 1889-1890 – 

MIKE RICHARDSON

I wonder why it is that local history is never taught in schools? Or at least it wasn't in my day and I've always wished that it had because quite simply – it's empowering. I grew up on a council estate in Bristol called Southmead and the only thing we were ever taught about our local area was to be ashamed of it and to keep quiet about the fact that we live there. On job applications, for example, on leaving school it was always better to put Westbury-on-Trym as your address rather than Southmead to avoid prejudicing yourself; Westbury-on-Trym being the middle class neighbouring area.

It wasn't until I began reading up on what little recorded history there was on Southmead that I discovered the name derived from what the area used to be known as in the past – South Meadow. I liked that. It had a sunny, fresh feel about it as opposed to the 'poor' and 'violent' connotations that the name Southmead was now associated with. I didn't want to feel ashamed of where I came from and I objected to being forced into feeling ashamed. I wanted to be proud and not have to show it only by fighting with gangs from other estates, which is what a lot of my peer group did. Discovering that Southmead was once known as South Meadow was a tiny, first step towards that pride.

There's a history to Southmead that I suspect has now largely been lost to the sands of time. A history not ever recorded in books but passed on through word of mouth and council estate folk tales. With the passing away of generations these tales and these memories dim and eventually pass away too. Even in my lifetime there is a history to Southmead that I know will also one day be forgotten. Events that though not on the same scale are no less significant than other historical national events.

The great fires of Southmead, the riots, the culture, the heroin wars, the characters – Joyce, the Queen of the Mead – the Southmead Boot Boys, the Pen Park hole, Concorde and its relationship to Southmead, the central Bristol slum clearance and the reconvening to Southmead, and so on and so forth. Even such things as the coach trips to Weston-super-Mare that were really just glorified mass shoplifting sprees, on one such outing the day trippers even returning with a whole juke box they'd stolen from a pub.

This obviously isn't the kind of stuff that would be taught in schools if only for the fact that teachers wouldn't even know about any of these things. It is, however, the stuff that makes us and helps to bring us to where we are now, much more so than the so-called great events and characters we are taught about in school due to it being deemed 'real' history.

Which brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and the pamphlets they publish recording history from below as opposed to the history of great wars, kings, queens and noblemen as recorded in the history books. And so to The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 (Parts 1 and 2) by Mike Richardson, wherein the author charts the events in Bristol during those two years.

The subtitle of Part 1 is 'Days Of Hope' and reflects the optimism as engendered by various workforces throughout Bristol as they unionised and took strike action over working conditions, working hours and pay. What Richardson highlights about these strikes, however, is the involvement of women workers and in particular the role that two middle class women from the Clifton area of Bristol played in them.

Among the number of strikes during this period was one conducted by 1700 mainly women workers of the Great Western Cotton Mill in the Barton Hill area of the city in 1889. Do people even remember there was once a cotton mill in Barton Hill let alone that all the workers there went on a strike that caused fall-out throughout the whole of the city? As an example of that fall-out, Richardson quotes from a letter published in two of the local newspapers at that time from the headmaster of Clifton College that is brazen in its defense of elitism, entitlement and class privilege:

'You employees must leave the judgement of all such matters in the hands of the directors, and when, with full knowledge, with large experience, such men tell you that it is of necessity a choice between the present rate of wages or none you must accept their word.

Believe me, it is safer to trust the word of responsible and honourable men of the stamp of your directors than it is to any one else who is busying himself, or herself, in this matter. And you know it is so. You cannot really believe all that is put before you in speeches , even though you may applaud it at the time. You must know that the directors are trusted for the money which has been entrusted to them, and they have no right to defraud the shareholders of their just claims for interest.

These are foolish people (the strike leaders) with warm hearts and weak heads who tell you that if you only hold out you will win. You have been misled, as all Bristol knows, not wilfully but in ignorance.'

By all accounts the working conditions of the cotton workers were atrocious and the pay abysmal, their demands for improvement being absolutely fair and justified. Ranged against them, however, was not only the directors of the cotton mill but also the Bristol Establishment and Bristol Church leaders all of whom were telling the women workers that there was no chance of change and that their suffering must remain. In response, the striking workers were insisting they would rather go to the workhouse, or to prison, or starve than go back under the same conditions. Moreover, the idea that the shareholders must get a continuous dividend and that this was sacrosanct was also beginning to be challenged. The strikers were now rising against that idea, or as Richardson puts it, the strike was beginning to go beyond protest against immediate conditions and shifting towards a rejection of the profit system.

The cotton workers strike ended not in a pay rise but in vast improvements in working conditions and so as the women returned to work it was seen as a victory for them and a defeat for the Establishment. One of the outcomes of the strike was also the introduction of the need for arbitration, an idea that whilst viewed by some as another advance in workers' struggles was viewed by others as a retreat from effective militant unionism.

Part 2 of the pamphlets, subtitled 'Days Of Doubt' records a series of other strikes that took place the following year in 1890, and the way in which they were approached and dealt with by workers, union committees and bosses alike. Richardson charts a downturn in militancy and the entrance of more moderate voices speaking on behalf of the working class as bosses adapted and learnt from the lessons of the previous year in how to deal with discontented workforces.

The two middle class women from Clifton whom Richardson highlighted in Part 1, who were so active during the cotton workers strike become burnt out and lose their faith in the workers attaining emancipation. Interestingly, having moved from their well-to-do homes and lifestyles in Clifton to the slums of the St Phillips area of Bristol, they eventually up-sticks and move away from Bristol entirely, emigrating to America, in fact. A choice that the workers who they had spent the last year agitating for and representing would never have been able to even dream of.

There are all kinds of lessons to be gleaned from these two pamphlets – as there are from all the pamphlets published by the Bristol Radical History Group – regarding struggle, revolution, social change and ideology. There are also, of course, the lessons in how history is recorded as in from below and above, and subsequently the interpretation of that history. Why is it indeed that very few Bristolians know about the cotton workers of Barton Hill yet everything about Isambard Kingdom Brunel – who wasn't even a Bristolian? These pamphlets are a step towards addressing all these things and are worthy of attention.

John Serpico

Bread Or Batons - Bristol Radical History Group

BREAD OR BATONS -

THE BRISTOL RADICAL HISTORY GROUP

As you walk along life's lonely highways, byways and boulevards of broken dreams, cutting a picaresque swathe through fire, death, pestilence and disease do you not sometimes wonder who else might also have trod this same path before you?

Was a time when on a daily basis I would walk along West Street leading into Old Market Street in Bristol, this being one of the main arteries into the city centre. Little did I know or have the slightest inkling at that time of the history of these roads and the surrounding area, and I wonder why that was? Why is it that none of the information as presented by the Bristol Radical History Group in their pamphlets has ever been taught in schools? The hidden histories. The important histories. The stories of our forefathers rather than the stories of kings, queens, tyrants and despots.

Bread Or Batons is one such pamphlet and though only 40 pages long contains more relevance than a hundred books on Edward Colston, the Merchant Venturers and whoever else Bristol might have statues erected in the memory of. It's the story of unemployed workers struggles' in Bristol during the 1930s and on reading it, the parallels with how things are in today's Britain are glaring.

Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, unemployment in Britain had risen to 3.5 million people and the National Government was on a mission to cut public expenditure in a blatant bid to put the burden of the financial crisis on the working and in particular the non-working class. To this end, unemployment insurance benefits were being slashed and entitlements means tested.

To counter this, under the banner of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM) a veritable army of unemployed grew and in a series of protests set out to challenge the political and economic decisions that were causing so much suffering to the poor. On the streets of Bristol, thousands of demonstrators turned out for marches upon the city's Council House only to be met time and again by lines of police blocking their route, truncheons at the ready. Down on Old Market Street, huge riots occurred, instigated - according to all the gathered evidence - by the police.

Perhaps the police did indeed view the unemployed - gathered together en masse, intent on marching on the Council House - as an army? Perhaps the police were afraid and felt the only answer was to see this army decommissioned? Was it their own decision and were the police acting independently in violently attacking the protesters, or were they acting under orders from above? Perhaps their intention was simply to prevent a breach of the peace but was the cracking of heads the best way to go about it? Were the police locked in a political struggle with the NUWM and its army of unemployed? Which begs the question: Have police tactics changed that much since those days? Are the police nowadays politically motivated? Are the police nowadays politically partisan?

As an answer to these last questions, French writer Anatole France is quoted, and it's a very good quote indeed: 'The law in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.' Which says it all, really.

When walking along Old Market Street in Bristol nowadays you would have no idea that such violent battles once took place there. You would have no idea of the violent injustice meted out there once by the police. It's not so hard, however, to see the similarities between those days and now in terms of the grinding down of those already at the bottom of the scrap heap. Perhaps more importantly, the big difference between then and now is in the reaction to the suffering heaped upon the poor and the vulnerable by those at the wrong end of it.

Compared to a lot of other towns and cities, Bristol has a hectic buzz about it as though its residents are busy dashing here and there in that curious, relaxed manner peculiar to Bristolians. For all the buzz of the city, however, not enough noise is actually being made. Not enough disrespect is being shown to those in positions of authority. Not enough disturbance is being caused. There's not enough standing up and saying 'No! We won't be ruled, we won't be governed, we won't be told what to do. We won't suffer from imposed austerity, bearing the burden of a financial crisis brought about by others.'

It's not a criticism, I might add, just an observation brought about by the reading of Bread Or Batons. An observation instigated by what is a very good pamphlet as published by the Bristol Radical History Group.

John Serpico