What can a mid-20th century monument to two women in Hackney tell us about women’s work and experience? Laura Gowing delves into the intertwined lives and friendship of Harriet Delph and Frances Garlick.
Radical Objects
Radical Object: Walter Crane’s The Workers’ Maypole (1894)
First published in 1894 in Justice, Walter Crane’s The Workers’ Maypole declares ‘the cause of labour is the hope of the world’. Powerful yet whimsical, The Workers Maypole brings together English folk tradition and the demands of the international labour movement.
Radical Object: Spanish flu badge, 1918-19
Martin Plaut unearths a Radical Object: the badge struck to commemorate the Spanish flu pandemic that followed the First World War.
Radical Object: Covert Broadcasts and the Nuclear Disarmament Campaign
During the 1960s an anti-war pirate radio station, ‘Voice of Nuclear Disarmament’, broadcast covertly through television sets across Greater London. Charlie Morgan delves into compelling recordings of the anti-nuclear movement, which are now preserved at the British Library Sound Archive.
Radical Object: A North African Book in the Early Medieval British Isles
The oldest surviving book owned by English speakers was a book made in North Africa. Alison Hudson traces how these radical fragments reveal that immigrants and cultural exchange have always been fundamental to British economies, culture, and communities.
Radical Object: Hull’s ‘Headscarf Revolutionaries’ Mural
Hull’s mural depicting Lillian Bilocca, the ‘headscarf revolutionary’ who led a campaign to improve safety conditions on board North Sea trawlers in the 1960s.
Radical Object: A Nice Cup of Tea? Everyday Ceramics as Sites of Empire
What can eighteenth-century ceramics tell us about empire? Elisabeth Grass examines how fine china tea cups and saucers became fashionable commodities that represent some of the many ways in which empire appeared, and was normalised, in British homes.
Radical Object: Report on the Relief of the Manchester Sufferers
A record of suffering: curator Janette Martin examines a report published shortly after the Peterloo Massacre which memorialises the injuries and identities of the victims.
Radical Object: A pot plant from Patty Ortiz’s “WWKY: I Am Here”
In an exploration of Patty Ortiz’s art with DACA migrants to the US, Irina Popescu argues that performance art can encourage empathy and political responsibility.
Radical Object: Billets de Confiance
What can history tell us about the politics of monetary innovations like cryptocurrencies? Rebecca Spang looks back to the era of the French Revolution to explore “billets de confidence” – local, decentralised bills of exchange.
