The new exhibition, We Only Want the Earth, opens on the 28th September and runs until the end of the year.
On the centenary of the Easter Rising it explores the life of one of its leaders, James Connolly, socialist, trade unionist, nationalist and revolutionary. We Only Want the Earth reveals the life and prolific works of this enigmatic man.
The free exhibition is open Wednesdays to Fridays 1-5pm, and the first Saturday of the month 10am-4pm (and a reminder that alongside the exhibition at noon this coming Saturday, 1 October, the NW Labour History Society presents a celebration of the life of Connolly at the Library; tickets available on the door).
Also tomorrow at the Museum is second talk in our popular free Invisible Histories series is also tomorrow, 28 September, at 2pm, when Ray Physick talks on The Olimpiada Popular of 1936 and the worker sport movement in the inter-war years.
Organisations linked to the international worker sport movement responded to an invitation from the Comité Organizador de la Olimpiada Popular (COOP) to take part in an alternative Olympics, the Olimpiada Popular, in Barcelona in July 1936. It is estimated that some 10,000 athletes and 25,000 visitors were in Barcelona to celebrate the Olimpiada. But following the fascist rising in Spain that month the Games had to be abandoned despite attempts by the organisers to go ahead with a truncated programme.
Subsequent talks in the series are as follows:
12 Oct Katrina Navickas Protests and public space in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the age of radicals and the Chartists, 1789-1848.
26 Oct Nicole Robertson “Organise, educate and agitate”: trade unionism and office workers in Britain, 1914-39.
9 Nov Mervyn Busteed Engels, the Burns Family and the Manchester Irish.
23 Nov Malcolm Pittock Albert Evans, Bolton WW1 conscientious objector.
Full details of the talks can be found at www.wcml.org.uk/events.
