Notts Rebels

Notts Rebel s

words: Ashley Carter and David Yancy

Peter Wyncoll once described Nottingham as a “banner town, always at or near the front of Reform Movements,” and with good reason. As a city, we can boast an illustrious history of rebellious acts, fighting injustice and righteous activism. In collaboration with the Nottingham Castle Trust’s Voices of Today campaign – which aims to inspire residents to get creative and represent their experiences or perspectives on activism, protest and rebellion – we’ve launched a brand new weekly online series celebrating the very best of Nottingham’s rebels. Here’s a rundown of the events, people and acts of protest we’re including...

J eremiah Brandreth

‘The Nottingham Captain’, as he came to be known, was an out-of-work stocking maker who lived in Sutton-in-Ashfield. After getting involved with the Luddite movement – a radical faction who protested industrialisation by destroying textile machinery – Brandreth was one of the leaders of the 1817 Pentrych Rising. With Britain in a deep depression following years of warfare against Napoleon, the ultimately doomed armed uprising intended to take control of Nottingham, creating a new currency and wiping out the National Debt. With the plot foiled by a hidden Government spy, Brandreth was caught, and has the dubious honour of being the last man to be beheaded by axe when he was executed outside Derby Gaol.

Alan Sillitoe

The impact of a poverty-stricken childhood in 1930s Nottingham clearly made a lasting impression on Sillitoe. The writer would have hated being called a ‘Nottingham rebel’ just as much as he loathed being labelled as one of the so-called ‘angry young men’ of the 1950s. But it’s impossible to overlook the rebellious and anti-establishment sentiments in his work. From Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, his writing captured an authentic rawness of time and place, and a palpable sense of frustrated disillusionment within his anti-heroic leading men.

Lucy Hutchinson

Born in 1620, Lucy Hutchinson boasts a pretty impressive CV that includes diarist, combat medic, poet, translator and biographer. Perhaps best known for translating Latin poetry into English (including the first ever full translation of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things), she was wife to Colonel John Hutchinson, one of the signatories on King Charles’s death warrant following the Civil War. Her writings paint a vivid picture of Puritan life in Nottingham during the war, which the Hutchinson’s successfully held despite repeated Royalist raids from nearby Newark. Although her work was neither circulated or appreciated during her lifetime (publishing female-penned work was deemed unsuitable) the importance of both Hutchinson’s Civil War accounts and translations were integral to later generations.

Henry Garnet

It was the most ambitious assassination attempt in British history, and one whose consequences are still with us today, four centuries later. Celebrated every November, the story of the Gunpowder Plot is well known, and catapulted a certain Guy Fawkes to lasting notoriety – yet despite Fawkes’ enduring infamy, he was far from the only one involved. Much less well remembered is the arrest of a Nottingham local, Henry Garnet, who the authorities executed for playing an instrumental role in the plot’s fruition. But was Garnet truly guilty of involvement, or was he the victim of something darker?

Nipp er R ead

Being deemed too short for the Nottingham police force, Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read moved to London to join the Metropolitan Police in 1947 after a spell working at Players cigarette warehouse and serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Moving his way up the ranks, he gained promotion to Detective Sergeant by 1958, and went on to cement his legacy as one of the most important figures in the history of the British police force. After being involved in the Great Train Robbery investigation, it was his leadership on the Met’s Murder Squad that eventually led to the conviction of The Kray Twins. Sadly,

Read died of COVID-19 last month, just one week shy of his 95 th birthday.

Ge orge Africanus

The exact details on George John Scipio Africanus’ early life are lost to history, but he was probably born in the early 1760s in a Sierra Leonean village. As a victim of the transatlantic slave trade, George arrived in England in early 1766, before settling in Nottingham as a free man at the age of 21. Together with his wife Esther Shaw, he started an employment agency, operating out of their home in what is now the Lace Market. As Nottingham’s first black entrepreneur, it’s impossible to over-state Afraicanus’ legacy, which is remembered with a blue plaque on his former residence, another on St. Mary’s churchyard railings and a tram named in his honour.

Brian Clough

What can you say that hasn’t already been said about Ol’ Big Head? His management career with Forest might be defined by silverware, but his reputation as being outspokenly honest and fearlessly controversial off the field is what makes Brian Clough a rebel. Wildly charismatic and always ready with an opinion, Clough consistently marched to the beat of his own drum, and suffered no fools in the process – just ask the lad who caught a mean right hook from him during a 1989 pitch invasion.

The Nottingham R eform Riots

It’s been said that the true history of Nottingham can be defined as a series of social struggles fuelled by the economic distresses of the city’s working class residents, and never was this more evident than with the events following the rejection of the Second Reform Bill in 1831. The failure of the bill – which sought to create a fairer electoral system – saw Nottingham erupt into serious rioting and systematic destruction. Over three days, a mob targeted property owned by prominent reform opponents, sacking Colwick Hall, setting fire to Lowe’s silk mill in Beeston and, on 10 October, surrounding Nottingham Castle and burning it down. 26 men were eventually arrested for the riots, of which eight were found guilty and three were hanged.

Margaret Humphreys

It’s hard not to be impressed by the magnitude of what Margaret Humphreys CBE has achieved in her time. The Nottingham-born social worker has dedicated her entire life to bringing attention to the British Government programme of Home Children, the widespread policy of forcibly relocating poor British children to Commonwealth countries. After uncovering the scandal in 1987, she worked tirelessly to bring justice to the surviving victims, which included a landmark apology from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2010.

DH Lawrenc e

Through his radical exploration of themes like sexuality, emotional health, vitality and spontaneity, Eastwoodborn writer David Herbert Lawrence garnered many enemies during his short life. Enduring endless persecution, censorship and the misrepresentation of his pioneering work, Lawrence spent the second half of his life in voluntary exile, which he called his “savage pilgrimage”. By the time he died at the age of just 44, his reputation was little better than a pornographer who had squandered his sizable writing talent. Now, he’s considered one of Nottingham’s greatest ever artists whose unscathed integrity may have cost him momentary popularity, but assured him a literary legacy few can match.

King Edward III

Young Edward may never have been King had it not been for a single act of bravery at the age of 17. His mother, the beguiling Isabella (often referred to as the She-Wolf of France) had arranged to have her husband, and Edward’s father – King Edward II – murdered, making her lover and co-conspirator, Roger Mortimer, de facto ruler of England. With Mortimer staying at Nottingham Castle, Edward and a small band of supporters led by Sir William Montagu, staged a coup d'état, entering the castle via a secret tunnel and overpowering Mortimer and his guards. From that single event, Edward III regained control of the throne, going on to transform England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe.

William Brewster

From the wonderfully named, though otherwise unassuming, village of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, William Brewster went on to become one of the most famous names in the foundation of modern America. Fleeing religious persecution in England (and later Holland), Brewster sailed aboard the Mayflower to the New World, landing at Plymouth Colony, where he became the settler’s senior elder. After a disastrous first year in which almost half their number died, it was the generosity of the Native Americans to Brewster’s surviving pilgrim settlers that began the tradition of Thanksgiving.

J ohn Deane

Sailor? War hero? Shipwrecked cannibal? Spy? Pirate? There are countless ways to describe the legendary life of John Deane, who was born in the village of Wilford in 1679. Pick any chapter from his 81-year life, and you’re guaranteed a fascinating story. Our personal favourite? When his ship, the Nottingham Galley, shipwrecked on Boon Island on its way to Boston from London. Deane and the surviving crew lasted two months by eating the flesh of their dead shipmates, before they were eventually rescued. Several of the survivors even claimed that Deane had intentionally caused the wreckage in order to claim a huge sum of insurance money...

Lady Mary Wortley Montague

Speaking of global pandemics, did you know that it was Notts’ own Lady Mary that is credited with introducing and advocating smallpox inoculation to Britain? We say Notts’ own, but Mary was never really tied down to any single location. Her father owned extensive estates in Nottinghamshire and Wiltshire, and Mary found herself in Constantinople, then the heart of the mighty Ottoman Empire, when her husband was appointed as Britain’s ambassador to the city. It was here that she first learnt of the practise of inoculation which, although initially met with scepticism and mistrust, gradually became accepted by the medical community.

Usha Sood

Usha’s upbringing in Malaysia heavily focussed on religion, which taught her the empathy and determination she’s so famed for in the courtroom. After attending a convent school, her family relocated to England so Usha could attend the University of Nottingham to study law. She began practicing in 1990 and, two years later, took on a case that lasted 22 years in total. Despite much doubt from her peers, this saw the first successful use of the Wardship in Immigration law. It was also used as one of the underlying cases which in 2009 led the Government to pass legislation to make children’s welfare a priority in immigration cases. Other career highlights include her winning the first successful dowry case in England and advising the Home Office on making forced marriage illegal.

Sleaford Mods

In a time when the music industry is filled with fake-rage and insincere rebellion, Sleaford Mods have consistently shown that they’re not afraid to put a boot firmly in the establishment’s arse. Frontman Jason Williamson’s brash, brutal style perfectly accentuates his embittered explorations of austerity-era Britain and working class life and culture. Grantham-born Williamson’s sprechgesang style has drawn comparisons with John Cooper Clarke, Ian Dury and Mark E. Smith, and once led Noel Gallagher to claim that there will never be another David Bowie, “because c*nts like Sleaford Mods will f*cking sneer at them.” If you’re pissing him off, you must be doing something right.

Eric Irons

As Britain’s first black magistrate, Eric George Irons OBE spent his life fighting racial inequality. Having been born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, he was recruited to the RAF during World War II, and eventually settled in Nottingham having visited RAF Syerston in Bedford. It was there that he met Notts girl Nellie Kelham, who he married and had six children with. Pushing back against the rampant racial prejudices in 1950s Britain, Irons set up a community group, the Colonial Social and Sports Club, at his own home, and continued to fight for the rights of Nottingham’s BAME residents until his death in 2007.

Lord Byron

There’s rebels, there’s anarchists, and then there’s Lord Byron. From keeping a pet bear during his time at Cambridge to fighting in the Greek War of Independence, his life was so wild it’s almost easy to forget that he was one of our greatest ever writers. As he said himself, “I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me.” While it’s hard to pick a single definitive moment from his life, our personal favourite came on 3 May 1810, when he took it upon himself to swim the Hellespont Strait, the open water stretch that separates Europe and Asia. Why? Because he could.

Helen Watts

Born in 1881, Helen grew up the daughter of the vicar at Holy Trinity Church in Lenton. In 1907, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, becoming an instrumental part in setting up the Nottingham branch of the organisation. Two years later she attended the Women’s Parliament at Caxton Hall, where a number of women demanded their case be taken to the Prime Minister. Helen was one of thirty women to be arrested and charged with obstruction, and accepted a sentence of one month’s incarceration rather than promise the court she’d adhere to good behaviour. Six months later, she was arrested again in Leicester, only to be released after a ninety-hour hunger strike. Her commitment to the fight for women’s rights cemented a lasting legacy in her hometown though – in 2016, a juniper tree was planted in Helen’s honour in the Arboretum.

St. Ann’s Riots

62 years ago, hundreds of people clashed on the streets of St. Ann’s. During events that have been described as “one of Britain’s most bitter and ugly black-versus-white battles”, men armed with knives, sticks, machetes and cut-throat razors clashed over increased racial tensions in the area. The aftermath of World War II had seen the need for manpower to help rebuild an exhausted country. The response – embodied by the Windrush, the ship that carried 500 Caribbean passengers to London in 1948 – saw a huge, and desperately needed, influx of immigration to the city. But with thousands of people living in impoverished conditions, coupled with the overt racism inherent in British culture at the time, violence erupted on 23 August 1958. It ended in a scene described at the time by the Nottingham Evening Post as a “slaughterhouse”, with dozens of men and women injured.

Wise Men of Gotham

How much of the story of the Wise Men of Gotham is legend, and how much is historical fact has long been debated, but the story goes as follows: in the 12th century, King John intended to travel through Gotham on a hunt. At that time, any road the king travelled on had to be made a public highway, something the people of Gotham were keen to avoid at all costs. Feigning imbecility, they baffled the King’s royal messengers who, wherever they went, saw members of the community engaged in bizzare, idiotic acts. They reported their findings back to John, who swiftly decided to hunt elsewhere.

‘Voices of Today’ is aimed at inspiring Nottingham residents to get creative and represent their experiences or perspectives on activism, protest and rebellion in a number of ways, including poetry, drawing, singing, acting, dance, creating a protest banner or something different altogether. You can submit your artistic take on Nottingham's history of activism, protest and rebellion at @nottmcastle using the hashtag #VoicesofToday