Decisions and consequences

Your visit to Birmingham People’s History Archive (BPHA) will include an archive tour, exhibition, and one of our exciting living history workshops. Our 2024 workshop, about the 1945 election, is pictured here.

The exhibition and workshop will focus on the Labour Party response to the use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War Two, and subsequent developments. You’ll see related archive materials, and find out about Birmingham people and events, including on VJ Day (Victory over Japan) 80 years ago. We’ll consider how government decisions affected the UK’s relationship with the USSR, USA and Europe, the beginning of the Cold War and development of NATO.

Our living history workshop, set in the 1960s, will compare the views of politicians who made decisions about Britain’s nuclear programme with those of the newly emerging CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). In doing so, wider views about the ‘nuclear deterrent’ and disarmament can be explored. As usual, audience participation in group singing at the end of the workshop is included!

Please email gill@bpha.online with any questions. We look forward to meeting you on 13 September.

This is a free event but donations and/or purchases of our magazine are welcome – we are a volunteer-run archive with no institutional funding. All donations go towards room hire, purchase of archive-quality storage materials or development work.

Birmingham People’s History Archive is on the 2nd floor of Birmingham & Midland Institute. There is lift to the 2nd floor, but several stairs down to the archive. Unfortunately, BMI is a Victorian listed building which currently has limited access.

Street parking around BMI is limited and metered. The nearest public car park is Snow Hill. Public transport links into the city centre are good. There are local cafés. Dogs aren’t allowed into BMI, except guide dogs.