Author: Nick Hunt (MPA)

This Slavery Podcast

We’re delighted to introduce you to our first Pendle Radicals podcast, created in partnership with Lancashire Libraries and Libraries Connected.  Put together by three of our Radicals contributors, the 4-part series is entitled This Slavery.  The first episode was released on 10 February 2021, and is called Pies, Chips & Politics. (The remaining episodes are called: Dainty Cakes & Heartaches; Blacklegs, Beers & the Truth Appears and Struggle, Dare & a Breath of Fresh Air.)

Working class writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth has been a favourite of the Radicals research group right from the start of the project. Her story is fascinating and multi-layered and our latest creative adventure is a podcast by broadcaster Elizabeth Robertson (aka Liz Catlow), writer/director Jules Gibb and sound engineer Scott Robertson.

The series looks at the novel This Slavery, published in 1925, a radical feminist and socialist tale of love, loss, poverty and politics.  The story concerns two sisters, mill-girls, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a fire at the mill leaves them unemployed.

Through their story, ECH shows the reader the effects of poverty and unemployment, and suggests why there was a vibrant labour movement during this period.  It is a story of real  people, women and men, who took militant action against the factory system.

Find out more about this fascinating writer and her work by listening to all the episodes. This LINK will take you to it on Spotify, but you can find all the links to other platforms on the Mid Pennine Arts website HERE. 

A Podcast and a PhD

It is two years now since our Pendle Radicals team embarked on an enquiry into the singular life and work of the extraordinary Ethel Carnie Holdsworth.  Now we can tell you about two exciting developments in swift succession, which give a wonderful new impetus to our ongoing research into Ethel.

Read about the fully funded collaborative doctorate entitled ‘Songs of a Factory Girl: Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and radical working-class women’s writing’.  

Also find out about our partnership with the BBC Novels project, Lancashire Library Service and Libraries Connected (a national body that aims to maximise the offer from libraries), on creating a podcast about Ethel.

You can read all the details in our blog here.

The Wonder Women Walk

Contributors to Pendle Radicals are developing a series of themed Radicals walks.  After the Two Toms, celebrating two pioneers of the countryside movement, comes this homage to two inspirational campaigning women.  Bob Sproule gives a preview of this urban/rural trek linking historic locations in Nelson and Earby.

To read more about this walk, that takes in locations connected to Selina Cooper and Katharine Bruce Glasier, read Bob’s full blog here.

Still Sick of Being Normal

Sick of Being Normal

is a song by Notsensibles.

I wrote it.

It’s just a nondescript one chord teenage angstism.

40 years later, and catalysed by Mid Pennine Arts (no hyphen), who were there right at the start,  the idea of a celebration of the local punk scene is born. It slots neatly into Mid Pennine’s Pendle Radicals project. We’re close to Pendle (I have a splendid view from the ranch) and by jove we’re radical.

Click here for the full blog blog by Stephen John ‘Sage’ Hartley.