Professor Kate Skinner The Widow’s Wrath: Inheritance Struggles in Postcolonial Ghana

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Wednesday 20th November 2024

On a very cold frosty night Professor of African History Dr Kate Skinner gave us a fascinating lecture on the treatment of widows in postcolonial Ghana.  She began by putting the hundreds of millions of widows worldwide into context.  Their image as an invisible group often increased by war and conflict was challenged by the Ghanian experience.  

Ghana, formerly the British Colony of Gold Coast from 1874-1957 has not had the wars or interstate conflict of its neighbours.  Today the age of marriage is increasing due to female education, narrowing the age gap between husbands and wives, while the size of families remains twice that of Europe.  A key difference from the image of widows as invisible victims was the portrayal of Ghanian widows in popular culture.  Among Ghana’s younger population older widows were often depicted as witches and driven out of villages but due to the country’s tradition of polygyny there were also young widows with small children.  As a result, there were often complex inheritance disputes when husbands died.  The British had attempted to resolve this by creating an Ordinance Marriage in 1884 but most Ghanaians had stuck to their polygyny traditions.  After chiefs and elders District Commissioners could be appealed to settle inheritance disputes despite their lack of legal qualifications.  Over time rich Ghanaians sent their sons to London to study for the bar. These returned to run Ghana’s postcolonial legal system.

Widows, including first wives were never entitled to their husband’s estate unless he left a will and they and their children were only entitled to a share of the estate with most passing back to the husband’s family.  Professor Skinner’s research of legal cases produced snapshots over time of how wealth was accumulated by men and women.  She was particularly looking at widows’ ‘rage’ rather than the invisible victim notion of widowhood. 

Using two cases where men had died intestate and their widows had taken on their in-laws in the courts she showed how Ghanian widows had shown their power and persistence. In one case the hard work of the widow in running three cocoa farms (linked to the UK chocolate industry) gave her a significant state in the inheritance. One of these cases had led to the 1965 Children’s Maintenance Act (Act 297). 

The questions from our audience also looked at the position of younger widows including child brides who still had little provision or protection compared with the first wife. The lecture raised some links to the situation of women and their families in other cultures and how many people in the audience had made a will themselves.  A lively and very relevant lecture ended at 8.50pm.

Sixth form conference on African kingdoms

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Friday 25th April 2025 1pm – 4.30pm

As a follow up to our successful Russia Conference the Bristol Branch is hosting a Sixth Form Conference on African Kingdoms from 1pm- 4.30pm  Friday 25th April 2025 as this an increasingly popular topic and Bristol Schools are leading the way. We are again being supported by the History and Education departments at Bristol University.

The speakers will be Professor Toby Green King’s College London

Professor Kate Skinner of Bristol University

Dr Jose Lingua Nafafe of Bristol University

Dr Esteban Salas of SOAS

The aim will be to support A level students and teachers doing the OCR’s African Kingdoms at  A level. The event is free to all students and their teachers and more details will be on the Bristol HA website soon. Branch members will also be very welcome.

If you are interested please contact MARY FEERICK

The First Labour Government of 1924 Lecture by Professor James Thompson

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23rd October 2024

Our second lecture 2024-25 was preceded by our annual general meeting.  Professor Thompson put Britain’s first Labour Government, led by Ramsay MacDonald into context.  He outlined how party politics had changed from 1900 when 243 seats in the election had been uncontested.  By 1918 Labour had become an organised party which had already won 20% of the vote after the war. He also explained how the expansion of the electorate to 20 million by 1924 had changed the nature of politics although the once dominant Liberal Party were still important in the 1920s. When at the end of 1923 the election gave the Conservatives 38% of the popular vote and the largest number of MPs but not an overall majority a Labour minority government was formed.  It lasted less than a year but what was its significance?

It has been dismissed as insignificant by political historians but Professor Thompson argued it mattered in several ways.  It showed Labour’s major ‘big five ministers’ and proved their competence.  It also showed Labour’s ability to maintain continuity in areas like foreign policy and their attempts to balance their links with the trade unions against managing the budget.  Chancellor Snowden produced the ‘housewives’ budget’ with reduced food prices.  In many ways this 1924 Labour Government faced some of the same issues as the Labour Governments of the mid-1970s.  This short lived Government showed Labour was fit to govern and established Labour’s identity.  It was not simply a trade union party.  It was clearly hostile to communism and the extreme left.  It was a national party and at this point it had a powerful leader.  The image and personality of James Ramsay MacDonald, later a discredited leader, was clearly an asset in the 1920’s.  Professor Thompson showed how MacDonald’s image was replicated in waxworks and cigarette cards and his persona as a gentlemanly widower and father of two daughters was used in popular media to promote the party. 

After the main lecture there was an excellent Q&A session in which members explored many of the issues raised included how in the 1930s Labour shied away from flamboyant leaders towards more understated figures like Clement Attlee.   

Joseph Stalin, Film Star: the Cult of Personality on Soviet Screens

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25th September 2024

118 attended our first lecture.

Dr Claire Knight gave a fascinating lecture on the how the personality cult around Stalin used cinema to promote Stalin as leader.  Despite a few technical hiccups our massive audience of members, students and guests were entertained by film clips and extracts from letters to understand the impact these films made on Soviet citizens.  Many Western film critics dismissed these films as meaningless corny propaganda. However, a study of them proved a real insight into how Soviet citizens attitudes to their leader changed over the decades. Claire began with the expensive technicolour film The Fall of Berlin, where Stalin features only in a cameo role.

She examined his role as the loyal comrade in Lenin in October in constant contact with Lenin and The Vow (1946) where he is marked out as Lenin ‘mark 2’ fulfilling Lenin’s role after his death but providing hundreds of 1000s of tractors where Lenin had only promised tens of 1,000s.

Claire went on to show how the ‘Great Patriotic War 1941-45’, changed the image of Stalin.  He is was no longer just Lenin’s disciple but ‘The Lone leader.’  There were endless runs of posters portraying Stalin as the great general and like Tsars before him he was depicted as the all knowing leader as in the film The Battle of Stalingrad.  Claire explained how Socialist Realism was used to portray the image of Stalin often using the same actors and even the same lines to tell similar stories decades apart.  

A new image of Stalin as the ‘Wise Leader’ was also given to cinema audiences.  Among the most eccentric of these, The Peasant (1935) featured a cartoon image of Stalin alongside a peasant mother and her tractor driving husband and her new baby.  The director Ermler believed in Freuds psychological theories and suggested the film would not have got through later Soviet censors.  Among Claire insights into the images of Stalin in posters and films was his depiction not as a father to a specific child but his role as Father of Nations and groups of children.

In the final part of her lecture Claire examined the archive of letters which showed the reaction of citizens to the film The Fall of Berlin. The writers were unexpectedly hostile.  They disliked the central character Alesha who they regarded as uneducated and not representative of modern Soviet citizens.  The critiques asked for rewrites but they also made the point that they were not small children of the Great Father (Stalin) but more like adult children of an elderly parent.  In her final thoughts Claire pointed out that these Soviet citizens, including the reviewers in the official paper Pravda, saw their role in the Great Patriotic War as central to its victory.  The crude propaganda of the 1920s and 1930s was no longer acceptable and they used the language of Social Realism to pull apart the images of The Fall to Berlin.  Again living under ‘Everyday Stalinism’ proves to be more complex than the old stereotypes of an absolute dictator. 

VIA DOLOROSA Sunday 1st September 2024

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A huge thank you to Dr Evan Jones for leading 28 Bristol HA pilgrims along the Via Dolorosa from Newgate (Castle Park) to Bewell’s Cross (Cotham Hill). Despite the rain Evan was able to paint a picture of how the condemned prisoners were taken on their final journey to the gallows at the top of St Michael’s Hill. The journey passed the High Cross at the centre of the city, the Guildhall on Broad Street, St Peter’s Gate and across the Frome before the steep ascent to northern outskirts of the city.

You can follow our route using this link.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1pQ5zYrZ1EH-IUTAFqxNm3__-uwhP3Ec&usp=sharing

or read the Wikipedia pages for Newgate and Bewell’s Cross.

BRISTOL HARBOUR WALK

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Sunday 12th May 2024

Twenty seven souls joined Rob on a guided walk from Redcliffe Parade to the very end of the Cumberland Basin system. We paused at Bathurst Basin, Princes Wharf, the Albion dockyard, the Underfall Yard and the lock system beyond the Plimsoll Bridge. Chronologically we journeyed from Saxon Brigstowe to the closure of the City Docks in the 1970s.