Levellers Day 2013

Please see the Levellers Day website here for more information.

The theme 2013 is “Learning the lessons of history”, very appropriate in the year of the anniversaries of both the Ascott Martyrs and the strike at the Bliss Tweed Mill.

• One hundred years ago the Workers’ Union (later to be part of the TGWU, now Unite) conducted an 8 month women-led strike at the Bliss Tweed Mill in Chipping Norton
• One hundred and forty years ago 16 women were arrested and imprisoned for picketing in support of their agricultural labourer husbands

So, as well as the Commemoration of the Levellers and laying of posies outside of the church with a commemorative address by Mark Chapman at 10.30, and the procession around Burford at 12.40, our panel will muse upon the relevance of these and many other current issues between 11 and 12.30:

• Dr Nick Mansfield (Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Central Lancashire): Celebrating and recording our radical history
• Professor Mary Davis (Visiting Professor in Labour History, Aston University) Radical, working class and labour movement history and why it is increasingly absent from all levels of mainstream education – how will we educate a new generation of Levellers?
• John Hendy QC (labour lawyer at Old Square Chambers) The legacy of the Levellers and the continuing struggles for access to democracy, rights and social justice today

When the procession returns the Sea Green Singers will entertain and include The Internationale.

In the afternoon there will be workshops led by the Workers Education Association (What’s happened to adult education?), Ruskin College (Radical women in history), and the Woodcraft Folk Craft Workshop.

Be there!