Hall of Science, Manchester, then (1846) and now (2011)




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Commemoration of the execution of 17 Luddites, York, 19 January 2013

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On Saturday 19 January, York's Alternative History held an afternoon of talks and commemoration for the Luddites tried and executed at York. placards outside York Castle In the huge space of the Guild Hall, Adam Gutteridge , one of the organisers, introduced the themes of the day. His speech echoed the two interesting articles publicising the event in the Guardian (by local historian Paul Furness, here , and by another organiser Helen Graham, here ). They argue that now that York's industrial economy is no more (chocolate and railways), York has remade itself round the past: an economy of tourism. Yet the past as presented to tourists and indeed to residents, is a sanitised and normalised history, centring round Vikings, medieval religion, and Georgian middle-class pleasures. The recent York 800 celebrations had no place for the popular protest and resistance that had a distinguished history in the city. I began the talks by explaining the context and meaning of the ...
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Protest history workshop #3, Cheltenham, 2/3/13

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TNA, PL 27/9 'Sarah Short refused to sign this Examination before me, R. Wright'. Manchester, 5 May 1812. TNA, PL 27/9. Charged with being at the Luddite attack on Burtons' powerloom mill at Middleton, Lancs, on 21 April 1812, this woman made a defiant act of resistance by refusing to sign the record of her examination by the Manchester magistrate Ralph Wright of Flixton Hall. But is this protest? Did it work? Can protest be individual? What is the difference between protest, collective action, resistance and opposition? can we include all types of opposition within the term 'protest'? These were questions we had asked at the first workshop on ' new approaches to the history of protest ' back in 2011, and returned to last weekend at the third workshop at the University of Gloucestershire. I started off the day with some reflections on the spatial turn in history (see extended version in my HWPP paper ) combined with some questions about th...
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