Professor Robert Gildea

Our first lecture of 2023-24 focused on the communities affected by the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85.

This fascinating and at times very moving lecture looked at how an industry that once employed a million men was defeated in a long-drawn-out dispute in the mid 1980’s.  The lecture highlighted how close knit communities were split and brought down.

Professor Gildea has based his new book on hundreds of interviews he did with miners, their wives and families.

He started the talk by describing the lives of miners. There were the boys who left school on a Friday and were down the pit by the following Monday. Many married young. Miners often drank and gambled as a compensation for the dangerous work they did. It was their wives who controlled the family budget and held the families together. Mining communities relied on organisations like the Miners Welfare.

During the struggle communities were split especially in Nottinghamshire. Many of the striking miners were sacked for the smallest offences. One miner was sacked for doing a v sign to a coachload of working miners. Communities survived by setting up soup kitchens and organizing food parcels. Women’s rallies were described in detail and without sentimentality.  

After the strike pit closures inevitably destroyed miners’ lives even further. Some skilled miners were able to find work. Many more eked out an existence in the gig economy. Many striking miners found themselves unfairly imprisoned and blacklisted. Others were sucked into drug addiction. Families collapsed under the pressure while others reinvented themselves like Sian James the Labour MP for Swansea East. Many of the survivors were determined to save their communities.  It was a complex and unfinished story.

This lecture was more than a narrative of a momentous part of the 1980’s. It was real insight into the methodology of Social History. Based on the oral history project carried out since 2013 this told the history of the dispute and its aftermath from the bottom up; from the perspective of the marginalized losers of the dispute rather than the government. Professor Gildea shared some of his interviews across the six main coalfields.  Miners and wives and their families were interviewed.  Professor Gildea described this strike as part of the “unmaking of the English Working Class” in contrast to EP Thompson’s famous work.  The project’s aim was to record for communities their voices and their story and the original interviews are being digitized and kept in the British Library archives.  Our audience responded with many thoughtful questions and we ran out time for all of them to be answered. 

Fourteen teachers attended our last event of the year. Mollie Burden and Rachael Herbert gave a delightful talk about the award winning history curriculum at Ashton Gate Primary School. We particularly loved their use of Bristol’s history including such topics as Fry’s chocolate, Brunel’s ships and the 1963 Bristol bus boycott. Dr Sarah Whitehouse gave a talk about ‘teaching tolerance in troubled times’ which led to a lively discussion about such topics as the fall of Colston. It was a lovely way to end the year.

Wednesday 21st June 2023.

Thirty eight Bristol HA members enjoyed a leisurely early evening cruise around the harbour on the Matthew. Evan Jones gave several enthralling talks on John Cabot’s 1497 and 1498 voyages to Newfoundland and what life would have been like for the crew. There was the added bonus of a bar and a fish n chip supper. A great way to end the 2022-23 season.

Sixty six people attended Ben’s lecture including students from seven schools. Ben’s lecture looked at the arguments around the fall of Tsarism. The optimists argue that the regime could have been saved were it not for the First World War. The pessimists argue that it was doomed. English absolutism was destroyed at the end of the seventeenth century and French absolutism at the end of the eighteenth century. The Russian victory over Napoleon lulled the Tsars into a false sense of security. Rather than looking at the characters of individual Tsars, Ben chose to examine the problems caused by social and economic upheaval, defeat in war, non-Russian nationalism and revolutionary agitation. He examined the role of key ministers such as Witte and Pobedonostsev. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 had many unforeseen consequences not least the further impoverishment of the peasants and the alienation of the nobility and gentry. Ben suggested the Polish revolt of 1863 was another warning that went unheeded. In the 1905 revolution many of the key areas of unrest were in non-Russian areas of the empire.
Thank you to Ben for putting Tsarist Russia into perspective and for coming all the way from Exeter.

Sunday 28^th May 2023.

A dozen Bristol HA members visited the Vickers Machine Gun collection at a secret location in Wiltshire. For security reasons we thought we might have to be blindfolded for the last part of the journey. A big thanks to Dave Voisey for inviting us and Rich Fisher for showing us around.

In the three hour visit Rich treated us to live firing demonstrations using a Vickers MG, Bren gun and Lee Enfield. The Vickers machine gun was used by the British Army from 1912 until 1968. Rich gave a brilliant talk about the manufacturing process. This included how the gun was simplified to cope with a shortage of skilled labour. The mighty Vickers company lasted from 1828 until 1999 and built guns, ships, aircraft and much more. Rich showed us how the gun was assembled using parts from all over the country including ammunition belts made by a curtain tape manufacturer. Before 1914 the Germans had to pay Vickers who held the licence for the Maxim-Vickers gun when they produced their version of the gun.

Vickers machine guns were a major British export. Rich showed us Vickers machine guns that had been supplied to many countries including the USA, Egypt, Turkey and Chile. The machinations of the arms trade in the 1930s was investigated by the Fabian Society who showed how the arms manufacturers, banks and diplomatic service worked together.

In the First World War a Vickers machine gun had a crew of eight. Richard went through the different skills that were required by members of the team which included a numerate rangefinder, an athletic ammunition carrier and horse handlers. When the gun jammed (we were firing blanks) he showed us how it had to be rapidly dismantled and reassembled.

The museum is a kind of prism through which we can study many aspects of British history in the first half of the twentieth century. It was quite a unique visit and the whole Bristol HA crew were captivated by Rich’s demonstrations and explanations.

The talk has been moved to Wednesday 7th June

We are very sorry to say that due to unforeseen circumstances our lecturer has had to postpone/cancel the lecture on Tsarist Russia on Wednesday 17th May.

We are hoping that we can reschedule it for later in the term. Please keep an eye on our website.

Did Queen Elizabeth I lose control in the 1590’s?

Professor Hutton gave another highly popular and relevant lecture for the Bristol Historical Association with our biggest audience this year, 136 including 91 local students from ten schools. Professor Hutton tackled what has been known among Tudor historians as the “neglected nineties.” He opened by giving a clear picture of all the lasting achievements of Elizabeth that were well in place in the 1590’s, after forty years of successful rule, including a poor relief system, good relations with England’s traditional enemies and the extension of the Crown’s powers. However, he then began to chip away at our familiar picture by outlining some of problems of the decade. He argued that the deaths of many of her most reliable courtiers like Raleigh, Burghley and Leicester made her a more marginalised figure. Her weakness for “silly young men with gorgeous legs” reached its height with the worst of them of all, the Earl of Essex so “chronically stupid” he should never have been allowed a role in political life.

A rather tragic picture of an elderly queen was presented from the perspective of foreign ambassadors who commented that she was still dressing like a young woman and jealous of her ladies in waiting who were young and attractive. The court was reported as “weary of old woman’s government.” More importantly the onset of corruption and selling of offices painted a picture of government shoring up problems that the Stuarts would be faced with. Underpaid crown servants had to use corruption to pay their staff and even the upright Burghley and his son were part of this system. By the late 1590’s corruption was endemic and Edmund Spencer declared “nothing was done without a fee”. When Parliament faced Elizabeth with the problem in 1601 and a bill to deal with it, she managed to talk her way out of the situation with her customary political skill but the problem remained.
Similarly religion was presented as not the grand compromise but an unresolved problem that other national Protestant states had worked out. As a result, at the end of Elizabeth’s reign new destabilising movements were massing. The Arminianism versus Puritanism conflict was gathering force. The religious fault lines divided counties (such as the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire) and parishes.

The conclusion was that Elizabeth never lost ultimate control and retained her charisma and intelligence but the problems that were amassing under the last years of her rule were an explosion waiting to happen in the seventeenth century. Her successful reign had mortgaged the future of her kingdom. After this thought provoking lecture there was a range of very well informed questions from the audience and some decisive and witty replies from our speaker.

Dr McLoughlin’s talk looked at the emotional, economic and political links between Concorde and Bristol. The Bristol aircraft industry had always been at the forefont of the development of aeroplanes and engines. The Brabazon had led the way after the war. Its cancellation did not stop the company moving into the development of jet airliners. Concorde was prime minister Harold MacMillan’s way of showing that Britain was serious about Europe. The links between Filton and Toulouse led to some interesting cultural exchanges with engineers using imperial and metric measurements and Bristol workers trying to understand why you would have wine with your lunch. The 1974 Labour government were worried about the soaring costs of Concorde and of course it was Tony Benn (a Bristol MP) who fought to ensure it was not cancelled. There were some fabulous interviews with the workers (men and women) who, whilst they were passionate about Concorde, realised that they could never afford to fly in it. There was the story of Brian Trubshaw’s maiden flight with Concorde 002 in 1969 when there were several taxi runs before he decided to take off.

1969 saw the birth of the Boeing 747. Along with the 1973 oil crisis this led many airlines to cancel their orders. Ultimately 20 Concordes were built in Bristol and Toulouse. Seven flew for British Airways and seven flew with Air France. Four were used as development aircraft. In 2003 a Concorde flew back to Bristol and the story seemed to come to an end. In 2006, Concorde was announced the winner of the Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum. A total of 212,000 votes were cast with Concorde beating other British design icons such as the Mini, mini skirt, Jaguar E-Type, Tube map, the World Wide Web, K2 telephone box and the Supermarine Spitfire

Dr McLoughlin would like to talk to anyone with memories of Concorde. There are many older Bristolians who may have worked at Filton or who witnessed the early flights. Please contact the Bristol Historical Association and we will pass on your contact details to Keith.