ZOOM EVENT Wednesday 9^th December

Last night we had brilliant end to our first Zoom term with, as ever, a large supportive audience who participated with lots of questions at the end.  Dr Patrick Vernon gave us a very personal historical talk about his project ‘100 Great Black Britons.’ Starting with his school days in Wolverhampton Patrick discussed how the education system often let down young black Britons leaving them with no knowledge of their place in British History.  He talked about how his successful career in the NHS and his voluntary work as a mentor to young Black people had led first to his ‘Every Generation’ website and then this project. He has been involved in it for over seventeen years. He was very funny in discussing his reaction to the BBC’s original series 100 Great Britons and their problems in the noughties with tackling Black British History.  The website that he and Dr Angelina Osborne set up was so obviously needed that when it opened it crashed within hours because of the interest.  He highlighted how in 2013 working with Nick Clegg he had saved the place of Mary Seacole and Olaudah Equiano in Michael Gove’s revision of the History National Curriculum.  Patrick explained the criteria for inclusion in the new version of 100 Great Black Britons which spans from the Tudor period to the present day including overcoming barriers, being at the top of their field and using their privilege to help their community.  What was most inspirational about Patrick’s talk was the many ways he has given his time to make History available and lively including designing a board game about migration which encouraged story telling and campaigning for the ‘Windrush Day’ to be remembered annually. Not only was this a great talk about Black History, it was great inspiration to the hear that History is more than what written in books and taught in universities. However the book ‘100 Great Black Britons’ is available on Amazon  and includes the list of 1,000 nominations which sounds like a great starting place for further research!!!

Penelope Harnett is one of our members. She writes………

I was interested in hearing about Ronald Hutton’s experiences in Eyam since my father was Mompesson’s 22nd successor and we lived in the old Georgian Rectory at Eyam  (Mompesson was the Rector at Eyam who co led the quarantine). This building was definitely haunted by Mrs Mompesson who died in the Rectory in August 1666.  She was a very aimable ghost who made her presence felt.

It was living in Eyam which generated my fascination for history  –  so many of the villagers had ancestors who had died of the plague  and that history created all the village traditions which were still practised.

We had great celebrations in 1965/1966 with a son et lumiere in the church and an outdoor play performed in a quarry both directed by L du Garde Peach of Ladybird fame who was a friend of my fathers.

Last night Professor Ronald Hutton gave a lecture to our largest meeting yet (66 people). A brilliant lecture on a highly relevant topic to a modern audience.  The lecture combined fascinating critical analysis of primary sources such as parish registers with much wider patterns and theories about how famine and plague affected England in the Early Modern Period. Professor Hutton’s lecture showed how victims’ bodies were disposed of at the height of the plague outbreak when even the record keepers were dying.  He showed how the experiences of plague and famine could be very different within the same country never mind in town or countryside.  Members were given a ghost story about his visit to the famous plague village of Eyam, where 75% of its population died when it was isolated for a whole year.   Many of our preconceptions about the causes of plague and famine were challenged. Its long-term effects on the country in making it tougher and more resilient and its eventual end not because of science but because of mass action were thought-provoking.    After the lecture we had some excellent questions including whether the present government could have learnt anything from how early modern governments handled plague outbreaks.   There were also some lovely comments in the chat box.

One of our members Paul Davies works for Bristol Community Radio. They have worked in conjunction with the M Shed, Bristol Archives, UWE and local folk to produce twelve podcasts on different parts of Bristol. Much of the information came from interviews with local people. This is a worthy follow up to Jon Lawrence’s lecture.

Each of the twelve episodes will focus on a particular Bristol neighbourhood – Barton Hill, Knowle West, Lawrence Weston, Easton, Fishponds, Hartcliffe, St George, Hillfields, Southmead, Eastville, Stockwood and Avonmouth.

Follow this link:

https://bcfmradio.com/12-communities-1-bristol

On Wednesday we had our third online lecture.  A bit nearer home than East Germany or Okinawa. Professor Lawrence began in East Bristol. His lecture took his own parents Doreen and Ronald as his starting point. Using family names, stories and a map of East Bristol streets he examined the idea of working-class community in mid-century Britain. Looking at the stories his parents had told him about their lives he began a wider historical enquiry.  Were working class communities closer in the mid-20^th century, did post-war affluence change working class Britons or had there always been a mixture of individualism and community?  He examined, individual working-class voices which have survived through sociological research interviews including shipbuilders on the Tyne in the late ‘60’s and single mums on Kent’s Isle of Sheppey 1978-88.  These contemporary voices came through in a very different way to those of older people looking back on their lives. The talk was illustrated by some extraordinary photographs.  As usual we had really thoughtful and lively questions including one from Professor Lawrence’s former history teacher at Bristol Grammar and former Bristol HA officer Philip Revell.  We also received some really warm email feedback from members

“I loved the content of tonight’s lecture and it tied in well with something I’ve been doing for years with my own ancestry….I started researching some of the actual names to put some flesh to the bone and began to associate them with the social history of their time.
For example a great uncle at 34 killed on the first day of the Somme leaving behind a wife and family similar to many children who suffered that fate. …” “Many thanks to the Bristol HA Branch for sharing tonight’s talk by Jon Lawrence. A fantastic evening, interesting and relevant.  Could I please sign up for the next session with Ronald Hutton, sounds as if it will be just as good as tonight’s offering.”

Despite Lockdown2 we are carrying on.

Our third lecture will be on Wednesday 11th November at 7.30pm. Professor Jon Lawrence will give a lecture entitled Family, Place and Belonging: stories about class and community from Bristol and beyond

Jon is Bristol born and bred and so this lecture will be particularly interesting to people interested in post war Bristol.

Josie McLellan’s talk ‘Glad to Be Gay Behind the Wall: LGBT+ activism in 1970s East Germany’ was based on her ground breaking oral history research among Germans who had been activists in East Germany. The Germans she interviewed had feelings of pride and nostalgia for what they had achieved. Josie looked at how these gay and lesbian Germans formed an organisation called HIB in the seventies which organised social gatherings both in private and in public. They made contact with and were inspired by gay groups in West Germany. Their slogan was ‘out of the toilets into the streets’. Peter Tatchell visited them at the time of the World Festival Games but the movement was infiltrated by the STASI and eventually forced to dissolve.

A fuller version is available in her book ‘Love in the Time of Communism’

Thanks to the 34 folk who attended our second Zoom event

BRISTOL HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION have our second lecture of the 2020-21 season on Wednesday 21st October at 7.30 pm. Professor Josie McLellan
Glad to Be Gay Behind the Wall: LGBT+ activism in 1970s East Germany
I have a zoom list of 46 people who will receive a link on Tuesday.

If you are a Bristol HA member who has not renewed their membership or a national HA member who has not asked to be on the zoom list or just someone who would like to join us please contact me.

Rob Pritchard Bristol Historical Association

Saul David delivered an excellent lecture on the Battle of Okinawa. 34 participants took part in our first zoom event and what a story. A kind of sub-tropical Passchendaele. Hundreds of thousands died within weeks of the end of the Second World War. Saul demonstrated a clear link between the battle and the decision to use the atom bombs five weeks later. Saul’s book ‘Crucible of Hell: The Heroism and Tragedy of Okinawa, 1945’ is being published in Japan at a time when there is great controversy over the behaviour of the Japanese Army towards the Okinawans.