Last weekend I went along to the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. (For those who have never heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs: "On February 24th, 1834, six farm labourers from Tolpuddle [Dorset, UK] were arrested on a charge of taking part in an ‘illegal oath’ ceremony. The real offence was that they had dared to form a trade union to defend their livelihood. For this they were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to the penal colonies of Australia. The sentences provoked an immense outcry, leading to the first great mass trade union protest. The campaign won free pardons and the Martyrs’ return to England. It was an historic episode in the struggle for trade unionists’ rights in Great Britain.")

Of particular interest to me were a couple talks delivered by the Bristol Radical History Group, which were perhaps the most controversial thing there. These were about the large scale Captain Swing riots "that swept across the south of England 3 years before the events in Tolpuddle." These were controversial in the sense that they were carried out by the so-called ignorant rural peasants. As the speaker pointed out, whereas The Tolpuddle Martyrs were innocent, the Swing Rioters were guilty and they were defiant in their guilt. They recognised their rights as people, despite what the law and the law-makers would have to say on the matter. It is the innocent/guilty polarity, (amongst other reasons), according to the speaker, which means that today many have heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs but few have heard of Captain Swing, despite the Captain Swing riots being a much larger movement involving a far greater number of people, and being a far bigger problem for the authorities. I agree. The talk was titled 'The Flea and the Elephant', the flea being Tolpuddle, the elephant Captain Swing.

The Bristol Radical History Group have put on many events, check their website for details of upcoming events. They also publish a series of pamphlets, three of which I picked up whilst I was at the festival:

We Come For Our Own And We Shall Have It, Smuggling In Poole And Dorset
Kevin Davies
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #2
A look at the history of smuggling in Dorset and the government responses to it. This pamphlet examines whether smugglers should be considered folk heroes and to what extent smuggling was a community enterprise.

Yesterday's To-morrow, Bristol's Garden Suburbs
Stephen E. Hunt
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #8
In 1909, the Bristol Garden Suburb Limited was set up to implement the ideas Ebenezer Howard popularised in To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, first published in 1898. Garden-City principles inspired promising developments at Shirehampton, Sea Mills and Keynsham chocolate factory, but were diluted in the construction of Bristol's interwar housing estates at Knowle West and Bedminster, Hillfields, Southmead, Horfield, Speedwell and St Annes. Today it's timely to revisit Howard's ideas in the light of several topics of green chatter — transition towns, peak oil and Gordon Brown's intention to promote the construction of eco-towns.

Nicotiana Brittanica, The Cotswolds' Illicit Tobacco Cultivation In The 17th Century
Will Simpson & Jim McNeill
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #9
Four centuries ago a group of farmers from the West Of England decided to see if they could make a living for themselves by growing tobacco. This put them at odds with the English state and its imperial ambition to build a mercantile economy driven by indentured and slave labour. This is their story of resistance.