Briefing NEWS 1317 August 2019 THE WEEKWhat happened at Peterloo?
On 16 August 1819, some 60,000 people
gathered in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester
to demand representation in Parliament.
Workers and families from across the
area –Wigan, Oldham, Saddleworth –
formeda“great assembly”, wearing their
best clothes, playing music, carrying flags
and banners. The event was peaceful, but
did not remain so for long. Cavalry were
sent into the crowds, and in around ten
minutes at least 18 people were killed,
including four women (one pregnant)
and achild. More than 650 were injured.
Soon after, the term Peterloo was coined
by alocal journalist, an ironic reference
to the recent Battle of Waterloo. As one
injured man said on his deathbed: “At
Waterloo there was man to man, but at
Manchester it was downright murder.”
Why was the official reaction so harsh?
Thirty years after the French Revolution, and only six years
after the Luddite rebellion, the government was on guard against
popular unrest. The Tory home secretary, Lord Sidmouth, had
been warned by informers and spies thata“general rising” was
imminent, and his officials advised that illegal assemblies should
be dispersed with force. The Peterloo gathering was preceded by
aseries of mass meetings, but it was on another scale–the
equivalent of half the population of Manchester. The local
magistrates, watching fromawindow overlooking the field,
panicked. They read the Riot Act and ordered in 60 troopers
of the Manchester Yeomanry,araw volunteer cavalry led by a
local factory owner, to arrest the main speaker, the radical Henry
“Orator” Hunt. They marched into the crowd, where they lost all
discipline. One witness recalled that they hewed “a way through
naked held-up hands and defenceless heads” with their sabres.
Aregiment of hussars then charged the crowd to disperse it.
What were the people demanding?
Political reform, and better conditions. Manchester was at the
centre of the industrial revolution, but it was still governed as it
had been in medieval times, without its own MP: there were two
for the whole of Lancashire, elected by
well-off landowners (the same number
as the rotten borough of Old Sarum in
Wiltshire, which had one voter). The
Napoleonic Wars had widened the
divide between industrial workers and
the ruling class. After demobilisation
in 1815, unemployment surged, the
textile industry was depressed and
food prices, kept high by the Corn
Laws, brought the poor close to
starvation. Working-class people –
including women, who formed female
reform societies–wanted change.
How did the country react?
The killings at Peterloo caused a
national outrage–innosmall part
thanks to newspaper coverage. The
Times sentacorrespondent to cover
the protest, but when he was arrested,
afurious local businessman, John
Edward Taylor, smuggled his report
to London. The Times published it in
full, along with later editorials stating
that the killings were “dreadful” and
unjustified. Taylor continued to report in
the months that followed, ensuring that
official attempts to discredit the marchers
never gained purchase. He helped to raise
funds for the injured and imprisoned,
and two years later foundedareformist
newspaper, The Manchester Guardian
–which became today’s Guardian.What did the protesters achieve?
In the short term, tragically little.
The government cracked down in the
aftermath. Hunt and nine others were
tried at York in March 1820. Hunt
was sentenced to 30 months in jail. The
hussars were commended by the Prince
Regent. The Six Acts, suppressing any
meetings of radical reformers, were
passed; habeas corpus had already
been suspended. The economy improved, and the movement for
popular democratic reform effectively went into abeyance until
the 1830s, when the Great Reform Act was passed and the
Chartists pushed for universal male suffrage. This was not
achieved until nearlyacentury after Peterloo.So Peterloo wasn’t particularly significant?
It depends on your perspective. Many people, largely on the left,
consider Peterlooaturning point in the struggle for democracy
–amilestone en route to key developments such as Chartism,
the trade union movement, and the fight for women’s suffrage.
The socialist historian E.P. Thompson called it “a formative
experience in British political and social history”. Within ten
years, he wrote inThe Making of the English Working Class,it
was remembered even among the gentry with “odium”. So, he
contended, “the massacre was yet in its wayavictory. Even Old
Corruption knew, in its heart, that it dare not do this again. Since
the moral consensus of the nation outlawed the riding down and
sabreing of an unarmed crowd, the corollary followed–that the
right of public meeting had been gained.”What’s the counter-argument?
Historians and journalists on the right argue that the importance
of Peterloo has been massively
overstated: that it was nothing like a
turning point in British history. Most
agree that it was an outrage, but a
minor episode with relatively few
casualties (“Only in England do they
call thatamassacre,” sneered a
French diplomat at the time). It has
been mythologised and its significance
exaggerated, critics argue, by dewy-
eyed, romantic left-wingers who love
stories that make the Tories look
callous (see box). The real progress
towards democracy, they suggest,
happened not in the street but in
Parliament. For now, it seems that
this argument is losing ground. This
year,aprogramme of 150 events has
been planned to commemorate the
bicentenary. On Friday, the
anniversary, performers and the
public were due to re-enact the events
of 200 years ago, to remember the
dead and the legacy of their fight for
basic democratic rights.The Peterloo massacreTwo hundred years ago protesters were brutally attacked by soldiers in Manchester. Why did it happen, and did it change anything?An 1819 engraving depicting the massacre“Ye are many–they are few”
Mike Leigh’s 2018 filmPeterloorevived the memory
of the massacre: the director argued that it had been
largely forgotten, and that it should be taught in
schools alongside “1066 and Magna Carta and
Henry VIII”. Peterloo has, however, long been
commemorated in British culture. In 1819, George
Cruikshank publishedasavage satirical cartoon of the
scene, featuring fat yeoman cavalry–they were mostly
gentlemen, freeholders and tenant farmers–scything
down the poor. At the time, commemorative
handkerchiefs, teapots and plates were sold.
But the most famous cultural tribute to Peterloo is
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s visionary poem,The Masque
of Anarchy.Shelley wrote it in September 1819, as
soon as the news reached him in Italy. The poem
actually entreats non-violent resistance–iti nspired
Gandhi, among others–but it wasn’t printed until
1832, after the poet’s death, for fear of stoking unrest.
It calls on the people to “Rise, like lions after slumber/
In unvanquishable number!” and ends with the line:
“Ye are many–they are few!” Jeremy Corbyn read the
last stanza toarapt audience at Glastonbury Festival
in 2017, and the poem is thought to have inspired
Labour’s current slogan: “For the many, not the few.”