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The Peterloo Massacre
__________________________ 'The universal significance of this historic event becomes ever more relevant in our own turbulent times.' MIKE LEIGH, director of the award-winning film Peterloo __________________________ The Peterloo Massacre is a revealing and compelling account of one of the darkest days in Britain's social history. On 16 August 1819, a strong force of yeomanry and regular cavalry charged into a crowd of more than 100,000 workers who had gathered on St Peter’s Field in Manchester for a meeting about Parliamentary reform. Many were killed. This violent, startling event became known as Peterloo, one of the darkest days in Britain’s social history. The Peterloo Massacre provides a revealing narrative account of the events leading up to Peterloo, starkly describes the actions of that fateful day, and examines its aftermath. It offers a new perspective on the political and military activities of the time, and shows how the very nature of society was powerfully influenced by irreversible technological a pattern that, two-hundred years later, still has relevance in understanding the forces shaping our world today. __________________________ 'One of our nation's defining moments.' STUART MACONIE 'Vivid and rather brilliant.' THE TIMES 'an absorbing analysis of one of the blackest days for civil liberties which this country has ever known. It is a story of heroes and villains, of suffering and carnage and of incompetence, betrayal and brutality, told with the skill of a master craftsman who makes history leap from the page fresh as the morning’s newspapers' EVENING CHRONICLE 'There are many accounts of the Peterloo Massacre but none as thoroughly researched as this one. The characters . . . come alive in his easy to read style . . . there is much to be learned from Robert Reid’s description and analysis of the role and effects of technology, and I hope his book will be widely read. It should be in every school library and discussed by all those involved in the continuing search for civilised solutions to the social and political problems currently facing our people.' CAMDEN JOURNAL
384 pages, Paperback
First published November 13, 1989
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Robert Reid
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 12, 2019
As we approach the 200th anniversary of this horrific event in English history, this is a detailed, very well researched and written book that brings that day horribly alive. And what Robert Reid does especially well is to put it in its historical context of the industrial revolution where the enormous wealth produced by the new mechanised cotton mills definitely did seep down to the impoverished workers.
Sadly, it is still relevant today as we see more and more work becoming insecure and low paid in giant distribution warehouses of the online retailers. At the same time, we are seeing a rise in autocratic rulers rowing back on basic human rights and imprisoning their opponents. This book reminds us of a time when the English government brutally repressed radicals seeking better lives for the workers and universal male (!) sufferage.
Sadly, it is still relevant today as we see more and more work becoming insecure and low paid in giant distribution warehouses of the online retailers. At the same time, we are seeing a rise in autocratic rulers rowing back on basic human rights and imprisoning their opponents. This book reminds us of a time when the English government brutally repressed radicals seeking better lives for the workers and universal male (!) sufferage.
March 10, 2019
A through account, very well researched, though I would have liked more details about the conditions of the cotton workers, and less about the government lackeys. It made interesting reading, but it left me with a sour taste in the mouth.
Perhaps, when we read an account of what happened after the massacre, that is hard to avoid. Still, for me, this was less the case with the Joynce Marlow and Donald Read books, or the selection of essays published by Robert Poole as 'Return to Peterloo' .
I already knew that the killers in the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry escaped justice (in this world, that is). So did most of those who sent them to do carnage that day. The enactment of the infamous Six Acts followed, effectively muzzling protest against this most oppressive of govenments. The author comments:
' It is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post Peterloo period of the early nineteenth century with those of the Black South African in the post Sharpeville period of the late twentieth century.'
The Radical leaders were imprisoned. The attempts of various people to hold the authorities to account, ie, through the inquest on death of John Lees, the Waterloo veteran who died two weeks after the massacre from his wounds inflicted by the Yeomanary Cavalry, were muzzled by outrageously partisan and irregular practices.
The author is usually obective. Still, I think he gives too much credit for courage to Joesph Nadim (the corrupt and brutal deputy constable for Manchester) and also, too much to John Lloyd, another establishment bully and spy, who referred to the day as 'glorious'. It may be that the emphasis on the latter is necessary, as it was invidious comparisons with his brutal techniques that may have led the magistrates to over-react to the presence of the crowd that day. This despite the clear directions they had received to avoid violence from Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary.
The author's condemnation of the violence by the troops is unecquivocal, as indeed, is that of anyone who learns the facts and is not going in for special pleading. Only a couple of very right wing historians have tried to excuse the conduct of the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry.
Unless I have mistaken his meaning, the author refers to those workers who may have been driven by desperate conditions to relish the chance to fight back if attacked, as 'thugs'. I think that term better applies to Lloyd, Nadim, many of the special constables and above all, the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry.
Samuel Bamford - that upholder of the law - argued that while he agreed that the crowd must be peacable, and not respond to provocation from the other side, it was necessary for a bodyguard of armed with staves only to be used to put off attacks by the militia and Nadim's forces, in defence of what he called 'our colours' (ie the banners). He cited the legal right to self defence. At a meeting before the march, this motion was defeated in Middleton as it was elsewhere. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of the crowd went to that ambush holding not so much as a stout stick. As bystanders commented, the very presence of childen and babes in arms among them was a guarantee that no violence was intended.
Of course, there would be some among them who quite relished the prospect of a fight, but that was not the intention of the gathering, and placed where they were, packed into St Peter's Field, and surrounded by hostile forces, it would have been singularly bad judgement to precipitate one.
What triggered the trembling magistrates to send in the inexperienced Yeomanary - rather than the Hussars, who as professional soldiers, would not panic, lose control of their horses,and cut at the fleeing crowd with the points of their sabres as did the Yeomanry, seems to have been merely that they had more control over them as a civil force. I think Joyce Marlowe's account of Nadim's cowardice in demanding a military escort rings true.
The book ends by saying how well John Lloyd - government spy and determined toady - flourished in his subsequent career. It seems that Oscar Wilde's wife was his grandaughter. Interesting, as Oscar Wilde was a socialist. Still, he was something of an armchair one... The book closing on those lines about Lloyd is what left a sour taste in my mouth. Of course, in the preceding chapter the author does commet on how, as we all know, working men did eventually win the vote, and later, women. But he is clearly of the opinion that the horrors of Peterloo made no impression on the development of workers rights.
I am far from sure, myself, that is true.
Viscount Castlereigh, who hadn't been directly involved in the government's activities and directives that lead to the carnage of 16th August 1819 - he's the one whose blinkered wife was so rigid in imposing the rules of conduct of the pampered few who went to be swallow tea and be bored at Almacks' - defended the actions of the govrrnment in the handling of the Peterloo Masaccre. He became very unpopular as a result, was hooted by contemptuous crowds, developed paranoia, and cut his own throat. Inexcusable as his defending the government line on the massacre is, I won't quote Byron's scurrilous epitaph. It is too uncharitable.
Perhaps, when we read an account of what happened after the massacre, that is hard to avoid. Still, for me, this was less the case with the Joynce Marlow and Donald Read books, or the selection of essays published by Robert Poole as 'Return to Peterloo' .
I already knew that the killers in the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry escaped justice (in this world, that is). So did most of those who sent them to do carnage that day. The enactment of the infamous Six Acts followed, effectively muzzling protest against this most oppressive of govenments. The author comments:
' It is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post Peterloo period of the early nineteenth century with those of the Black South African in the post Sharpeville period of the late twentieth century.'
The Radical leaders were imprisoned. The attempts of various people to hold the authorities to account, ie, through the inquest on death of John Lees, the Waterloo veteran who died two weeks after the massacre from his wounds inflicted by the Yeomanary Cavalry, were muzzled by outrageously partisan and irregular practices.
The author is usually obective. Still, I think he gives too much credit for courage to Joesph Nadim (the corrupt and brutal deputy constable for Manchester) and also, too much to John Lloyd, another establishment bully and spy, who referred to the day as 'glorious'. It may be that the emphasis on the latter is necessary, as it was invidious comparisons with his brutal techniques that may have led the magistrates to over-react to the presence of the crowd that day. This despite the clear directions they had received to avoid violence from Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary.
The author's condemnation of the violence by the troops is unecquivocal, as indeed, is that of anyone who learns the facts and is not going in for special pleading. Only a couple of very right wing historians have tried to excuse the conduct of the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry.
Unless I have mistaken his meaning, the author refers to those workers who may have been driven by desperate conditions to relish the chance to fight back if attacked, as 'thugs'. I think that term better applies to Lloyd, Nadim, many of the special constables and above all, the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry.
Samuel Bamford - that upholder of the law - argued that while he agreed that the crowd must be peacable, and not respond to provocation from the other side, it was necessary for a bodyguard of armed with staves only to be used to put off attacks by the militia and Nadim's forces, in defence of what he called 'our colours' (ie the banners). He cited the legal right to self defence. At a meeting before the march, this motion was defeated in Middleton as it was elsewhere. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of the crowd went to that ambush holding not so much as a stout stick. As bystanders commented, the very presence of childen and babes in arms among them was a guarantee that no violence was intended.
Of course, there would be some among them who quite relished the prospect of a fight, but that was not the intention of the gathering, and placed where they were, packed into St Peter's Field, and surrounded by hostile forces, it would have been singularly bad judgement to precipitate one.
What triggered the trembling magistrates to send in the inexperienced Yeomanary - rather than the Hussars, who as professional soldiers, would not panic, lose control of their horses,and cut at the fleeing crowd with the points of their sabres as did the Yeomanry, seems to have been merely that they had more control over them as a civil force. I think Joyce Marlowe's account of Nadim's cowardice in demanding a military escort rings true.
The book ends by saying how well John Lloyd - government spy and determined toady - flourished in his subsequent career. It seems that Oscar Wilde's wife was his grandaughter. Interesting, as Oscar Wilde was a socialist. Still, he was something of an armchair one... The book closing on those lines about Lloyd is what left a sour taste in my mouth. Of course, in the preceding chapter the author does commet on how, as we all know, working men did eventually win the vote, and later, women. But he is clearly of the opinion that the horrors of Peterloo made no impression on the development of workers rights.
I am far from sure, myself, that is true.
Viscount Castlereigh, who hadn't been directly involved in the government's activities and directives that lead to the carnage of 16th August 1819 - he's the one whose blinkered wife was so rigid in imposing the rules of conduct of the pampered few who went to be swallow tea and be bored at Almacks' - defended the actions of the govrrnment in the handling of the Peterloo Masaccre. He became very unpopular as a result, was hooted by contemptuous crowds, developed paranoia, and cut his own throat. Inexcusable as his defending the government line on the massacre is, I won't quote Byron's scurrilous epitaph. It is too uncharitable.
Read
June 8, 2019This year marks the bicentenary of the Peterloo massacre. On the 16th August 2019, armed cavalry charged a tightly packed crowd of well over 60,000 people who were gathered in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to call for political representation. At least 18 were killed and over 650 injured, many severely.
The fight for history began immediately. James Wroe, writing in the Manchester Observer, compared the murderous assault on unarmed men, women and children, with bitter irony, to the culmination of the Napoleonic Wars at the battle of Waterloo four years earlier:
It is rumoured, and we believe it correct, that orders have been sent to an eminent artist, for a design, to be engraved for a medal, in commemoration of Peter Loo Victory.
For his trouble he was imprisoned, and his newspaper was harassed by the courts and police until it was forced to fold.
The British establisment was terrified by the example of the French Revolution (though not terrified enough to share the wealth they jealously hoarded). Dissenting publications were prosecuted. Public assemblies were outlawed. Paid spies informed on their neighbours. According to Reid, even before Peterloo, Britain was ‘closer in spirit to that of the early years of the Third Reich that at any other time in history’. And the forcible curtailment of freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, worked, to a degree.
Following the massacre, rioting broke out – as might be expected – and in the city of Manchester was swiftly put down by troops who shot and slashed at civilians. Some unrest continued into the next day in neighbouring towns, but there was little more violent reaction. Those attacked at Peterloo, and their many sympathisers throughout the country, went on to arrange a series of peaceful protests and pursued the perpetrators through the courts.
Their restraint in the face of violence was the more remarkable in its contrast to that of the state in the face of speeches and petitions. If the vast crowd had indeed been a tinderbox of revolutionary sentiment, one might have thought that the unprovoked murder of many of its constituents would have been just the spark to set it off.
The government and the courts, of course, ignored these lawful attempts at redress. In fact, it was the leaders of the demonstrations at Peterloo who were arrested, tried, and jailed. The British state so successfully stifled public reportage on the reform movement that the establishment has been able to continue to downplay the significance of Peterloo to this day.
The traditional historical focus on top-down change – that dictated by kings, queens or parliaments, or by military force – dovetails nicely with the refusal of Lord Liverpool’s Tory government to acknowledge the Peterloo protestors. Today’s Tories often take this tack. Lord Lexden OBE, Official Historian of the Conservative Party, thinks it was a lot of fuss about nothing and implies that the deaths didn’t amount to anything so awful as a massacre by belittling the word with quotation marks.
He believes that at the time, ‘everyone except a small radical minority believed that the demanding tasks of government should be in the hands of an elite’ – everyone here being an unconscious euphemism for everyone that matters, not including small minorities represented by at least 60,000 people gathered to demonstrate out of a population of less than 500,000 in Manchester and the surrounding towns.
He does go so far as to smack the naughty Manchester magistrates on the wrist by suggesting that they acted ‘imprudently’ when ordering mounted troops to forcibly remove the crowd. In the Daily Mail, Dominic Sandbrook was prepared to call it a massacre, though also ‘almost certainly an accident’ and, actually, ‘by the standards of Britain’s neighbours, it was barely a massacre at all.’
The lack of concrete gains by the abused demonstrators means that Reid can write: ‘Peterloo was to have no effect whatever on the speed at which [their] demands were met.’ Jacqueline Riding, in her own take on these events, Peterloo, can say no more about their historical impact than that they ‘certainly drew national attention to the conditions of the working man, woman and child in the manufacturing districts of Great Britain.’
One result of this official indifference to Peterloo is the lack of public recognition afforded it. A monument was partially completed in 1842, but fell into ruin and was demolished in 1888. A blue plaque, on the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, evasively noted the gathering of a crowd and its ‘subsequent dispersal by the military’, was replaced in 2007 by a red plaque that states the relevant facts clearly.
The approaching bicentenary has galvanised efforts to remember Peterloo. Publishers have reprinted books on the subject (including Reid’s); the excellent People’s History Museum has a new mural; Mike Leigh (despite Manchester critic Danny Moran’s reservations about the film Peterloo as a work of art) is telling the story to a new generation of cinema-goers; and The Peterloo Memorial Campaign is agitating for a permanent monument on the site.
These battles over the significance of Peterloo are a subtler continuation of the fight for power of which it was a manifestation. Those in power prefer to believe that progress is something benevolently granted to the masses as they become responsible enough for it, while those out of power hold to the notion that progress is wrested from the rich through popular struggle. Something like this historical divide in British politics, and its crystallisation in accounts of Peterloo, has been noted in the Economist (which with its usual complacence about the status quo claims the centre ground as though it was politically neutral and non-ideological).
To nail my colours to the mast (if you hadn’t noticed already), I am for the left, and for Peterloo as a significant event for the history of the UK. If the government did not immediately pass legislation conceding to workers demands, did the political repression at Peterloo and during its aftermath contribute nothing to people’s appetite for reform?
The politically motivated closure of the Manchester Observer left a vacuum filled in 1821 by the Manchester Guardian, founded by John Edward Taylor, an eyewitness of the massacre, to ‘advocate the cause of Reform’, which it does, more or less, to this day. The Chartists took inspiration from Peterloo: The massacre was cited as an inspiration by Feargus O’Connor, one of the Chartism movement’s major leaders, and was remembered on banners at their meetings. And though the Chartists themselves did not have their demands met before the movement foundered, five of their six ‘radical’ proposals are now fundamental elements of British democracy. Without the resources to simply put their desires into effect, the results of popular movements accrete organically and over long periods of time, changing the way a society sees itself before changing its laws.
Reid doesn’t play down the wreaking of violence on a peaceful crowd, nor does he wear his political heart on his sleeve. He places the blame for the massacre on conflicting messages from the national government and weak leadership of the civil and military forces by local government. The fault in this view appears to lie in poor administration of crowd management.
But to assume that the crowd needed to be managed is to take the side of the power the people were resisting. It is a technocratic view, common to a number of accounts of Peterloo and perhaps illustrated most starkly by the faithful Tory Lexden: ‘the resources and institutions at [the government’s] disposal made it impossible to avoid death on a small scale very occasionally.’ This view ignores the capacity of people to act under their own authority – precisely the authority they were asserting by gathering on St Peter’s Field to demand change.
Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy ‘on the occasion of the massacre at Manchester’, yet due to concerns about the political climate it wasn’t published until 1832. Shelley’s poem casts, not the radicals, but the British establishment as Anarchy: ‘splashed with blood … he wore a kingly crown’. The rich and powerful act in their own interest, ignoring the righteous laws of heaven which can’t ‘be sold / As laws are in England’.
What right did the government and their magistrates have to police by violence the gathering of their fellow citizens in the first place? They were willing to sanction violence to maintain order – an order out of which they did very well – because they feared the potential violence of those their order oppressed. And this prejudice against the violence of change, this blindness to the violence that keeps things going on the way they are: this is the wider question – valid for us, today – that is left unexamined by a nitpicking focus on chains of command, on administrative procedure.
Peterloo was a moment in which the violence that maintains the establishment was made visible, and that it reminds us of that violence is enough to make it significant in every generation that remembers.
The last word to Shelley:
Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free
The fight for history began immediately. James Wroe, writing in the Manchester Observer, compared the murderous assault on unarmed men, women and children, with bitter irony, to the culmination of the Napoleonic Wars at the battle of Waterloo four years earlier:
It is rumoured, and we believe it correct, that orders have been sent to an eminent artist, for a design, to be engraved for a medal, in commemoration of Peter Loo Victory.
For his trouble he was imprisoned, and his newspaper was harassed by the courts and police until it was forced to fold.
The British establisment was terrified by the example of the French Revolution (though not terrified enough to share the wealth they jealously hoarded). Dissenting publications were prosecuted. Public assemblies were outlawed. Paid spies informed on their neighbours. According to Reid, even before Peterloo, Britain was ‘closer in spirit to that of the early years of the Third Reich that at any other time in history’. And the forcible curtailment of freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, worked, to a degree.
Following the massacre, rioting broke out – as might be expected – and in the city of Manchester was swiftly put down by troops who shot and slashed at civilians. Some unrest continued into the next day in neighbouring towns, but there was little more violent reaction. Those attacked at Peterloo, and their many sympathisers throughout the country, went on to arrange a series of peaceful protests and pursued the perpetrators through the courts.
Their restraint in the face of violence was the more remarkable in its contrast to that of the state in the face of speeches and petitions. If the vast crowd had indeed been a tinderbox of revolutionary sentiment, one might have thought that the unprovoked murder of many of its constituents would have been just the spark to set it off.
The government and the courts, of course, ignored these lawful attempts at redress. In fact, it was the leaders of the demonstrations at Peterloo who were arrested, tried, and jailed. The British state so successfully stifled public reportage on the reform movement that the establishment has been able to continue to downplay the significance of Peterloo to this day.
The traditional historical focus on top-down change – that dictated by kings, queens or parliaments, or by military force – dovetails nicely with the refusal of Lord Liverpool’s Tory government to acknowledge the Peterloo protestors. Today’s Tories often take this tack. Lord Lexden OBE, Official Historian of the Conservative Party, thinks it was a lot of fuss about nothing and implies that the deaths didn’t amount to anything so awful as a massacre by belittling the word with quotation marks.
He believes that at the time, ‘everyone except a small radical minority believed that the demanding tasks of government should be in the hands of an elite’ – everyone here being an unconscious euphemism for everyone that matters, not including small minorities represented by at least 60,000 people gathered to demonstrate out of a population of less than 500,000 in Manchester and the surrounding towns.
He does go so far as to smack the naughty Manchester magistrates on the wrist by suggesting that they acted ‘imprudently’ when ordering mounted troops to forcibly remove the crowd. In the Daily Mail, Dominic Sandbrook was prepared to call it a massacre, though also ‘almost certainly an accident’ and, actually, ‘by the standards of Britain’s neighbours, it was barely a massacre at all.’
The lack of concrete gains by the abused demonstrators means that Reid can write: ‘Peterloo was to have no effect whatever on the speed at which [their] demands were met.’ Jacqueline Riding, in her own take on these events, Peterloo, can say no more about their historical impact than that they ‘certainly drew national attention to the conditions of the working man, woman and child in the manufacturing districts of Great Britain.’
One result of this official indifference to Peterloo is the lack of public recognition afforded it. A monument was partially completed in 1842, but fell into ruin and was demolished in 1888. A blue plaque, on the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, evasively noted the gathering of a crowd and its ‘subsequent dispersal by the military’, was replaced in 2007 by a red plaque that states the relevant facts clearly.
The approaching bicentenary has galvanised efforts to remember Peterloo. Publishers have reprinted books on the subject (including Reid’s); the excellent People’s History Museum has a new mural; Mike Leigh (despite Manchester critic Danny Moran’s reservations about the film Peterloo as a work of art) is telling the story to a new generation of cinema-goers; and The Peterloo Memorial Campaign is agitating for a permanent monument on the site.
These battles over the significance of Peterloo are a subtler continuation of the fight for power of which it was a manifestation. Those in power prefer to believe that progress is something benevolently granted to the masses as they become responsible enough for it, while those out of power hold to the notion that progress is wrested from the rich through popular struggle. Something like this historical divide in British politics, and its crystallisation in accounts of Peterloo, has been noted in the Economist (which with its usual complacence about the status quo claims the centre ground as though it was politically neutral and non-ideological).
To nail my colours to the mast (if you hadn’t noticed already), I am for the left, and for Peterloo as a significant event for the history of the UK. If the government did not immediately pass legislation conceding to workers demands, did the political repression at Peterloo and during its aftermath contribute nothing to people’s appetite for reform?
The politically motivated closure of the Manchester Observer left a vacuum filled in 1821 by the Manchester Guardian, founded by John Edward Taylor, an eyewitness of the massacre, to ‘advocate the cause of Reform’, which it does, more or less, to this day. The Chartists took inspiration from Peterloo: The massacre was cited as an inspiration by Feargus O’Connor, one of the Chartism movement’s major leaders, and was remembered on banners at their meetings. And though the Chartists themselves did not have their demands met before the movement foundered, five of their six ‘radical’ proposals are now fundamental elements of British democracy. Without the resources to simply put their desires into effect, the results of popular movements accrete organically and over long periods of time, changing the way a society sees itself before changing its laws.
Reid doesn’t play down the wreaking of violence on a peaceful crowd, nor does he wear his political heart on his sleeve. He places the blame for the massacre on conflicting messages from the national government and weak leadership of the civil and military forces by local government. The fault in this view appears to lie in poor administration of crowd management.
But to assume that the crowd needed to be managed is to take the side of the power the people were resisting. It is a technocratic view, common to a number of accounts of Peterloo and perhaps illustrated most starkly by the faithful Tory Lexden: ‘the resources and institutions at [the government’s] disposal made it impossible to avoid death on a small scale very occasionally.’ This view ignores the capacity of people to act under their own authority – precisely the authority they were asserting by gathering on St Peter’s Field to demand change.
Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy ‘on the occasion of the massacre at Manchester’, yet due to concerns about the political climate it wasn’t published until 1832. Shelley’s poem casts, not the radicals, but the British establishment as Anarchy: ‘splashed with blood … he wore a kingly crown’. The rich and powerful act in their own interest, ignoring the righteous laws of heaven which can’t ‘be sold / As laws are in England’.
What right did the government and their magistrates have to police by violence the gathering of their fellow citizens in the first place? They were willing to sanction violence to maintain order – an order out of which they did very well – because they feared the potential violence of those their order oppressed. And this prejudice against the violence of change, this blindness to the violence that keeps things going on the way they are: this is the wider question – valid for us, today – that is left unexamined by a nitpicking focus on chains of command, on administrative procedure.
Peterloo was a moment in which the violence that maintains the establishment was made visible, and that it reminds us of that violence is enough to make it significant in every generation that remembers.
The last word to Shelley:
Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free
February 21, 2019
Robert Reid’s account of the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 is a very well researched & written masterpiece. Reid charts the build up to the cavalry charge by the local yeomanry and regular army into a crowd of 150000 peaceful unarmed working-class men women and children on Peters field in Manchester. He describes the main characters including the orators and leaders of the reform movement, demanding fair representation in Parliament, together with the agents of the national and local government and the army. The impression one gets is that the country was in those times a v repressive police state, with v rough justice for the common man. Reid also succeeds in describing the climate of fear amongst the ruling classes about a working class uprising in the aftermath of the French revolution.
The massacre itself is described in detail drawing on many eye witness accounts some of which were written up by reporters for the newspapers who wrote about they saw on that dreadful afternoon.
The concluding chapters reflect on what effect the demonstration had on the lot of the working people and on where the responsibility for the massacre lies.
I was reading the book at the time I went to watch Mike Leigh’s film of the same name and the two complement each other v well.
The massacre itself is described in detail drawing on many eye witness accounts some of which were written up by reporters for the newspapers who wrote about they saw on that dreadful afternoon.
The concluding chapters reflect on what effect the demonstration had on the lot of the working people and on where the responsibility for the massacre lies.
I was reading the book at the time I went to watch Mike Leigh’s film of the same name and the two complement each other v well.
March 12, 2019
I was reading Robert Reid’s book at the time I saw Mike Leigh’s excellent film of the same name; it was attended by the director who was available for a questions and answers session afterwards. The two melded well in my thoughts then and in my memory much later. What comes across so clearly is the undoubted inequality and lack of rights or privileges allowed for the lower classes at that time. All the cards were in the hands of the landed gentry and their toadies and lackeys, with some such as Deputy Constable Joseph Nadin, only too willing to administer their own particular brand of justice in a violent and ruthless fashion. On the day magistrates and many of the military officers were so convinced that any kind of gatherings, or calls for reform of government, were the start of a threatened revolution, of the kind that had occurred in France or in America that they panicked into the use of military force.
Robert Reid describes in great detail the events that led up to 16th August 1819, with a named cast list of the main characters, and the various influences that affected their actions and poor decisions. The resulting, senseless, carnage and terrible injuries to innocent men, women and children caused by poorly trained officers of ill-disciplined yeomanry and hussars was never officially recognised. Many of those responsible were applauded and promoted later, with deliberately “blind eyes” being cast about, even as high as the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Prince Regent. Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary, proposed The Six Acts to the House of Commons, using the unrest at Peterloo as an excuse. It said that “every meeting for radical reform is an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against the King and his government”. This indicates that the government was out-of-date with the kind of mentality prominent in the previous century.
The Peterloo Massacre is one of the major disgraces of the British government during the 19th century in my opinion. Although I think that Reid’s book is excellent, in the research and details so obviously used, I found that I had to disagree with some of his own observations about the incident and some of the characters. When he describes Nadin as “fearless” I consider the corrupt policeman to be sadistic in the extreme. And I think that the author does little to condemn people like John Lloyd and the outrageous dereliction of duty shown by General Byng, who absented himself that day to go to the races, when he had been appointed as being in overall charge of the military forces at St Peter’s Field. Finally the author seems to be of the general opinion that the horrendous day known as The Peterloo Massacre did virtually nothing to further the cause of working people’s rights. Fortunately, the horrors were well documented by the press, including some of the most prestigious papers in Manchester and London and there is no doubt that some of the more enlightened upper class radicals and future working class Chartists would see it as a rallying point at a more opportune time
Robert Reid describes in great detail the events that led up to 16th August 1819, with a named cast list of the main characters, and the various influences that affected their actions and poor decisions. The resulting, senseless, carnage and terrible injuries to innocent men, women and children caused by poorly trained officers of ill-disciplined yeomanry and hussars was never officially recognised. Many of those responsible were applauded and promoted later, with deliberately “blind eyes” being cast about, even as high as the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Prince Regent. Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary, proposed The Six Acts to the House of Commons, using the unrest at Peterloo as an excuse. It said that “every meeting for radical reform is an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against the King and his government”. This indicates that the government was out-of-date with the kind of mentality prominent in the previous century.
The Peterloo Massacre is one of the major disgraces of the British government during the 19th century in my opinion. Although I think that Reid’s book is excellent, in the research and details so obviously used, I found that I had to disagree with some of his own observations about the incident and some of the characters. When he describes Nadin as “fearless” I consider the corrupt policeman to be sadistic in the extreme. And I think that the author does little to condemn people like John Lloyd and the outrageous dereliction of duty shown by General Byng, who absented himself that day to go to the races, when he had been appointed as being in overall charge of the military forces at St Peter’s Field. Finally the author seems to be of the general opinion that the horrendous day known as The Peterloo Massacre did virtually nothing to further the cause of working people’s rights. Fortunately, the horrors were well documented by the press, including some of the most prestigious papers in Manchester and London and there is no doubt that some of the more enlightened upper class radicals and future working class Chartists would see it as a rallying point at a more opportune time
November 12, 2024
A thoroughly enjoyable read about one of the events that should be more well known in English history. Reid's book is divided into 36 short chapters and this helps to maintain interest and builds up the momentum as it closes in on the tragic events: it is very well researched although the author is obviously not a fan of the key orator, Henry Hunt. He prefers the ground breaking work of the unknown John Bagguley.
There are quite a few unpleasant self-serving characters here amongst those in power, none of whom were called to account after the shocking events in Manchester in 1819. Reid's conclusion is that Peterloo had "no effect whatsoever on the speed at which the demands" of the demonstrators for reform were met. However, having squashed the leadership of those seeking change in autumn 1819 it was not too many years later that the Government passed the 1832 Reform Act and the Chartists and other movements came to prominence.
There are quite a few unpleasant self-serving characters here amongst those in power, none of whom were called to account after the shocking events in Manchester in 1819. Reid's conclusion is that Peterloo had "no effect whatsoever on the speed at which the demands" of the demonstrators for reform were met. However, having squashed the leadership of those seeking change in autumn 1819 it was not too many years later that the Government passed the 1832 Reform Act and the Chartists and other movements came to prominence.
April 7, 2020
This was written over 20 years ago and it is a piece of British Social History that needs to reflected upon. The working/living conditions of the early 19th century wage slaves particularly in the industrialised heartlands of GB are set out in brutish detail and brought to life by an excellently researched work. At one point Reid likens the lot of the industrial workers to the privations of Black South Africans during its apartheid years "...It is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post-Peterloo period...with those of the black South African in the post- Sharpeville period..." it would be very difficult to argue with this, indeed the British worker was probably worse off that his South African counterpart. Great read well written and well researched highly recommended.
April 7, 2020
A thorough even handed account. Centred on the character of Sir John Byng (and his peccadilloes) it name checks Admiral John Byng executed for cowardice (pour encourage les autres as Voltaire was to put it) but does not mention Lt General Julian Byng who featured at Arras and Cambrai. Henry Hunt's reputation is definitely punctured by Reid's account. Although justices from the Home Secretary down to the local police force feature extensively there was little justice or social justice for those who suffered and continued to suffer injury, poverty and imprisonment.
May 14, 2020
Probably a 4.5 though I gave it a four. It was much better at giving me an in depth look at one event than similar books I've read. The context of the nation at the time was very interesting, particularly how the home office operated and the use of spies. Definitely a book I might read again to give me contextual knowledge, although it dragged at times. I also felt the aftermath of the event was not as well detailed as the precursor.
August 28, 2025
Nice and readable history driven by the odd and quirky characters. Lots of class stuff as well, you really get the sense that this was an early demonstration of class warfare - aristocrats and manufacturers cutting down unemployed and unrepresented workers in Manchester.
Also enjoyed the idea that technology itself is ungovernable and responsible for social upheaval, not just individuals and governments.
Also enjoyed the idea that technology itself is ungovernable and responsible for social upheaval, not just individuals and governments.
September 28, 2023
I believe Reid spends too much time laying out the political and socioeconomic pictures atmospheres that gave rise to the Peterloo incident. While interesting, Reid gets mired in their minutiae. This historical case-building comprises nearly half of the book. By the time Reid chronicles the actual Peterloo massacre, it feels almost anticlimactic.
December 27, 2018
A very readable and very fine history. A good balance of detail and pace. My only slight criticism is that Reid occasionally ascribes feelings to the protagonists.
June 8, 2020
Incredibly readable.
Read
March 14, 2022Very good - explained what happened very well
April 6, 2025
Well researched, but dense and occasionally meandering
June 18, 2019
This book is an important read especially for those interested in learning about the working classes fight for rights both in the political and working spheres. It has been two hundred years since this dreadful event occurred but hardly anyone in Britain knows that it happened. The event or tragedy is not taught in schools. An important book especially in a period of uncertainty. It is important that we do not become complacent. The only disappointment in the book is that I would have liked to have learnt more about the working class people but I guess their stories will probably never be fully known has many did not write down their experiences of what happened.
May 31, 2021
Brilliant account of the characters and events that led to this sad episode in our history.
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