THE “PETERLOO MASSACRE”

Blessed with good weather, 20 SPAG members visited the site of Manchester’s “Peterloo Massacre” of 16 August 1819. The walking tour started with an explanation of the politics of the time, revealing the British government’s genuine fear of revolution, coinciding with the adverse effects on workers of the Corn Laws and a post-Waterloo economic slump.

The mass-meeting (chaired by Henry “Orator” Hunt) held in support of trying to get parliamentary representation for workers in and around Manchester was broken up by local authorities, who ordered the deployment of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry and members of 15^th Hussars cavalry regiment. This led to 18 deaths and around 700 people injured. Within a week the event was referred to by the Manchester Observer newspaper as “Peter Loo”.

We visited the sites of: where the magistrates viewed the crowd with increasing alarm; the “Hustings”; and the still-standing wall of the Friends’ Meeting House against which many were injured. Also, we visited the Peterloo memorial, designed to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of this hitherto little-memorialised event. The names of those who were killed, and of many of the towns who sent people to the meeting, are carved into the edges of the stone steps.

It is fitting that the memorial to – and site of – the Peterloo Massacre is literally in front of a building that now hosts MPs at major political party conferences annually.

(An excellent article on Peterloo is available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/04/peterloo-massacre-bloody-clash-that-changed-britain)