This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” — Sir Isaac Newton.
WITH the recent Summer of Crypto-Fascist Riots, it’s perhaps heartening that far-right agitation prompted a swift, semi-spontaneous rebuttal in the form of mass anti-racist counter and pre-emptive demonstrations.
‘Oh Farage! Up Yours!’
After X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”
And with this two-fingered salute to the Faragist tendency we can perhaps also welcome the return of 1970s British phenomenon Rock Against Racism, in the shape of Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR). I’m just about old enough to remember RAR and the galvanising effect the organisation had on some of the formerly apathetic youth in the 1970s and early ’80s.
![CS Lewis in 1947 [Pic: Scan of photograph by Arthur Strong]]( https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/low_resolution/public/2025-04/Untitled-1.jpg.webp?itok=RsbHM2ER)
After a ruinous run at Tolkien, the streaming platforms are moving on to Narnia — a naff mix of religious allegory, colonial attitudes, and thinly veiled prejudices that is beyond rescuing, writes STEPHEN ARNELL




