The Peterloo Conference at the People’s History Museum
on Saturday 18 March organised by the Society for the Study of Labour History
was very well attended with excellent speakers.
Three of the speakers, Joe Cozens, Katrina Navickas
and Robert Poole, were the people whose contribution at the Long 18thC Seminar
in January stimulated me to explore a number of issues in the my discussion
paper The Importance of the Peterloo Massacre 1819 which I finalised for
sale at the Conference. They were able to share information and ideas not
included in their talks in January, or have been the results of continuing
research since.
Resources
in Manchester
The first speakers were Janette Martin and Mike
Powell on sources on Peterloo and the Manchester Histories Festival. Janette explained
the work being undertaken at John Rylands Library which includes an exhibition
until 29 September, supported by digital resources The detail can be seen at www.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/peterloo.
It includes original handwritten records showing the names of the Mancunians
who were killed, and historic newspapers coverage. A particular important
collection was the posters and broadsheets of the period collected by one of
the magistrates.
The
Manchester Oligarchy
Robert Poole gave an in depth analysis of pre-Engels
Georgian and Regency Manchester, citing the poet Robert Southey’s description of the town published in 1808 (https://library.chethams.com/collections/101-treasures-of-chethams/southeys-letters-to-espriella),
and de Tocqueville’s of 1835 (https://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod01_nature/evidence_detail_05.html)
His analysis of the local authorities in the
Greater Manchester area revealed a Tory oligarchy which had a very narrow view
of ‘loyalism’, and a record of using the military including for prevention. The
Massacre was no accident; the action was deliberately preventive as were the
arrest of Hunt and those on the platform. That Loyalism was backed by the
Orange Lodges which began to be formed in England starting in the Greater
Manchester area from 1807, and the Manchester & Salford Volunteers formed
in 1817.
Henry
‘Orator’ Hunt
John Belchem argued that Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt was
tireless in his unbending advocacy of the need for full democracy and the
importance of the mass meeting to politically pressure the Government, unperturbed
by Government spies and the risk to his fortune made from agriculture during
the wars with France. Hunt occupied the political territory between the radical
reformers like Major John Cartwright and Sir Francis Burdett, whose tactics
were more traditional, and the revolutionary Spenceans. He was essential to the
development of the popular movement. The Spenceans were also advocated mass meetings.
Hunt’s conditions for speaking at the
ones they organised. e.g. at Spa Fields in 1817 meant they could not advocate
their full programme. That year the Hampden Clubs backed Hunt’s tactics against
those of Cartwright, Burdett and William Cobbett. The 1817 Habeas Corpus Act
closed the role for mass meetings, pushing the Spenceans underground, a world which
spies exploited. Hunt condemned the prosecution of Spenceans like Dr Watson,
standing up for the oppressed and supporting the victims. His meeting in Manchester
in January 1819 was followed by others in the North. The August one on St
Peter’s Field was part of his general build-up of support for one planned for Kennington
Common. The Massacre led to a split with the Spenceans moving towards physical
force/insurrectionary tactics. Hunt opposed wanting to maintain the moral high
ground.
Songs
and Broadsheets
Alison Morgan discussed the ballad and broadsheets
about Peterloo. She played tracks from a forthcoming CD by folk singers she has
been working with. She suggested that this print culture linked radicalism and
literacy. In addition to using folk song music, tunes the ballads were set to at
the time included Rule Britannia, God Save the King, and Handel’s The Conquering Hero Comes. Such tunes
had been popularised at Pleasure Gardens, and had filtered to a mass audience.
The singers think that some of the tunes are variations of Morris ones.
The
Politics of Peterloo
Katrina Navickas discussed the politics of
Peterloo from 1832 with the Whigs claiming it as part of their heritage
following the Reform Act of 1832, then the Chartists, then the Liberals who
built the Free Trade Hal on the site. The socialist, Marxist and trade union
historians saw Peterloo as part of the canon on events of class conflict and
working class organisation. In Manchester the City politicians up to 1969 saw
Peterloo as something the Labour Party and the Trades Council did, so nothing
was one by them.
Katrina argued that there is now a more holistic approach
to studying Peterloo and its significance. It was part of the struggle for
parliamentary reform started in the 1760s under John Wilkes (‘Wilkes &
Liberty’), through to the 1790s with the London Corresponding Society, and on
to Hunt (‘Hunt & Liberty’). She stressed the importance of the regional
dimension – Greater Manchester with people coming from the surrounding towns and
villages, and of the cross-regional
dimension like in the East Riding. Several of those at Peterloo became touring speakers
about what happened, helping to build a Northern working class identify and a view
that London had failed them.
Peterloo was nationally significant because of the
Government response, the Six Acts the solidification of loyalism, and the loyal
addresses to the Regent from every County. The Acts widened the definition of what
freedom was and the meaning of rioting, and made criticising Parliament treasonable.
The legacy of Peterloo was reactionary repression. Nearly 20 years later this
approach influenced the 1839 Royal Proclamation against torchlight meetings and
illegal assemblies, and much latter the legislation to control public spaces e.g.
Trafalgar Square in 1888 and the 1908 and 1963 Public Order Acts.
The
Left and Peterloo
Joe Cozens' talk was about the left being the most
active in memorialising Peterloo, as the rightful custodians of memorialisation.
He suggested there were four key legacies form Peterloo: state violence
martyrdom and violence, women as victims and political agents, and the tension
between democracy and capitalism. His talk included mention of Hunt’s wish for
Peterloo to be annually remembered, the Chartists’ memorial to the victims and
Hunt in Manchester (1842-88), and the Manchester 1919 memorial activities and
demonstration.
At the latter Peterloo was seen as part of the attack on the
working-class and the poor. Tom Mann led the singing of The Red Flag. It took place in the context of the race riots in
port cities and towns, the deployment of troops in Glasgow, and the Amritsar Massacre
in India. The Workers Welfare League for India sent a message of support. Kathleen
Glasier, the Editor of the Daily Herald, wrote about the conditions of the Indian
workers being like those in Manchester in 1819. Joe illustrated how Peterloo
was seen as part of the history of the struggle for votes for women. The Pankhursts
had an ancestor who was there. In 1912 Votes
for Women carried a long piece on The
Manchester Meeting.
I do not think that Joe’s view of the left alters
my overview that there has been no left highjacking of Peterloo memorialisation.
It remains concentrated in the Greater Manchester area, with little appreciation
elsewhere apart from in Newcastle with John Charlton’s The Wind from Peterloo pamphlet.
The
Need for More Research at Local Level
Mike Leigh’s film has had mixed reactions and
people come away from seeing it without understanding its national importance.
In Conference discussion I urged the need for more research in the local
responses to the Massacre in order to make Peterloo more relevant to people
outside Greater Manchester. John Charlton posed the question whether, if the
Massacre had not occurred, could one have taken place in Newcastle, as the October
meeting had been in planning stage as a mass reform meeting, before the
Massacre took place. Would the military
and volunteers have been sent in? He also suggested that there needed to be a
better understanding of the period leading up to 1819, for example on T the
seamen who joined the Town Moor demonstration in columns marching for North
Tyneside, had previously been on strike for several weeks.
Some
Questions
Three questions that emerged for me from the talks
and discussions with people at the Conference were about the dissemination of
radical ideas, the sub-regional differences, and how the ideas remained alive
through the period of reaction and repression until the campaign for the Reform
Act which partly was only passed because of the fear of revolution, and then
the emergence of the Chartist mass movement.
Question
1.
How were the ideas for radical change and collective action transmitted between
London and the provinces, and between the towns and villages across the
country? The answer will be complex, including: people trading their
agricultural produce and small scale
artisan manufacturing products by going into the nearby towns; the complex
consumer distribution systems via the canals, the river boats, coaches, coastal
ships, waggons and horse riders (as illustrated in my research into 18thC
orange trade); the tramping artisans and unemployed workers; the speakers
touring; the distribution of the radical press and pamphlets and of the ballad
and broadside literature; and the networks of trade, occupation, religious
affiliation, and friendly societies.
Question
2.
What are the differences in sub-regions in terms of governance and the politics
of the complex mix of local authority bodies? Loyalism was not so narrow in
Newcastle; there was no attempt to prevent the Town Moor meeting; Whig and Tory
rivalry opened up space or other voices to organise and be heard.
Question
3.
Once the mass movement declined following the Six Acts, how did the ideas
continue to remain alive across the country, enabling the development of the
revolutionary climate of 1831 and 1832 and the development of the Chartist mass
movement from 1838?
SSLH
fact sheet
Joe
Cozens and GCSE resource video
