‘With Henry Hunt, we’ll go my boys,
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go,
We’ll mount the Cap of Liberty,
In spite of Nadin Joe.
On the 16th day of August
Eighteen hundred and nineteen,
A meeting held in Peter’s Field
Was glorious to be seen,
Joe Nadin and his big bulldogs,
As you might plainly see,
And on the other side,
Stood the bloody cavalry.
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go my boys,
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go,
We’ll mount the Cap of Liberty,
In spite of Nadin Joe.’
So how did a Wiltshire gentleman farmer
End up on the hustings at Peterloo?
How did a seemingly egotistical,
And self-regarding rhetorician,
End up being eulogized by the North,
And revered by the industrial working class?
Tell me, Mr. Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
Up there, on the hustings and platforms,
In your self-centred, narcissistic white hat,
How did it happen?
‘I was born on the 6th November 1773, in Wiltshire, at Widdington Farm, not within a mile of any other habitation, near Upavon. Widdington Farm lies about a mile from the turnpike road … a lone farm, in a valley upon the downs. How well I remember bringing my newly wedded wife there! A deep silence reigned around; not a tree nor even a bush was to be seen; and since we left the turnpike road, the carriage having passed over the turf for nearly the last mile, the well-known sound of wheels rattling over the stones had never once vibrated.
But as a young man, both bachelor and husband, I was a patriotic loyalist, as you would expect of a gentleman of my lineage. And when my father died, what he rented, and what he left of his own, was nearly all the tything of Littlecot, as well as Chisenbury farm, and I was in possession of Widdington farm, about two miles distant. All the farms were now in my occupation, and, as I thought it proper to live more centrical, I took Chisenbury House, a large old-fashioned, handsome mansion.
But not withstanding my elevated position as a landowner, other gentlemen showed a degree of condescension towards me; and that disinclined me to show any support for them. My loyalism began to wane; and my patriotism began to wither.
And, of course, the policies of Pitt, and the French War, led to further disenchantment: the government spies, the informers, the threat to liberties, the pauperization of the laboring classes; I was stirred, too, by the adamantine example of Colonel Despard, and by the despicable use of the military in the North in 1812. No too mention the sybaritic decadence of the rich.’
And all this helped turn Henry Hunt Esq.
Into white hat Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
Who whilst wary of armed revolt,
Was equally wary of milksop political reform:
He wanted universal suffrage,
Not just household suffrage,
Together with annual parliaments and the secret ballot;
In short,
This 18th century gentleman farmer,
Who spent over two years in prison after Peterloo
Became a bridge and a conduit to the age of Chartism –
Hear the Chartist William Lovett
On Hunt’s brief but industrious time
In the House of Commons:
‘In vain do all sides of the House unite, cough, shuffle and groan … he pauses for a moment, until the unanimous clamour of disgust is at its height, and then, re-pitching his notes, apparently without an effort, lifts his halloo as clear and distinct above the storm, as ever ye heard a minster bell tolling over the racket of a village wake.’
His speeches acted as a clarion call –
His antagonism towards corruption
And the political control of a few aristocrats
Was exemplary from the beginning:
‘It was they who voted away the public money, and created the debt. It was they who squandered the resources of the country upon their relatives, their friends, their pomp, and their parasites. The people had nothing to do with the anti-Jacobin war. That war, and the debt which grew out of it, had been voted by a corrupt House of Commons, chosen by these 157 worthies.’
And then a year later, in 1812,
Alliterative again at the Bristol elections:
‘I am of no party but the people and I detest all those who plunder that people.’
He may have lost that election, but the shouts of
‘Hunt for ever’ resounded through the streets,
As Oxymandian-like, the King’s statue,
Came tumbling down in Portland Square;
And then at the end of the French Wars,
When the Corn Laws were passed to keep out cheap foreign corn,
And so enrich the aristocracy at the expense of the poor,
‘Under the protection of a military force, in defiance of the prayers, the petitions, and the remonstrances of a great majority of the people of England’;
And then a year later at the Spa Fields meeting in Clerkenwell,
Where, at times, he spoke in the third person:
‘he knew well what ought to be done in such a crisis. He knew well the superiority of mental over physical force; nor would he counsel any resort to the latter till the former had been found ineffectual. Before physical force was applied to, it was their duty to petition, to remonstrate … Those who resisted the just demands of the people were the real friends of confusion and bloodshed; but if the fatal day should be destined to arrive, he assured them that, if he knew anything of himself, he would not be found concealed behind a counter, or sheltering himself in the rear’;
And after Spa Fields, he spoke at Bristol,
At Brandon Hill, in the pouring rain:
‘We want no tumults, no riots, only our rights … The partisans of corruption wanted a Plot – they would give anything for a Plot – but we shall disappoint them … Let them surround us with their cavalry and artillery – we will oppose to them the artillery of truth, reason, and justice’;
Spa Fields made him a national figure:
And it emphasised his position
Betwixt the minority revolutionaries
And the reformist household suffragists –
He introduced himself to the London Convention in 1817
(Of Hampden Clubs, at the Crown and Anchor),
As one who was supported by the following:
14,000 petitioners of Bristol,
8,000 of Bath,
And over 100,000 at Spa Fields;
And even though he opposed physical force activity,
He nailed his colours to the mast in 1817,
In the spy-riddled atmosphere of that year –
Hoping to save the men of the Pentridge Rising
From execution;
Defending the Spa Fields revolutionaries
Against charges of high treason,
Exposing the role of Castle, the government spy,
In the aftermath of Spa Fields and the Rising;
Hunt was now the radical champion in the West Country
(A freeman of Bristol),
In London,
And in the industrial midlands and north, too;
He was the people’s choice –
See the red flag unfurled, inscribed thus:
‘UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE’,
With a Cap of Liberty, inscribed thus:
‘Hunt and Liberty’;
Radical thought now turned to plans for mass campaigns –
The 1817 Seditious Meetings Act had nearly run its course –
There was a plethora of ideas:
Petitions and Remonstrances
And Declarations to the Prince Regent,
But once Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary,
Rejected the idea of such a proposal,
Hunt decided to take these documents north to Manchester –
He was acclaimed by thousands at mass meetings,
For he was the Spa Fields’ leader and salvation,
And Samuel Bamford led his praises in verse:
‘Thou raised thy voice and the people awakening
Beheld the foul source of corruption display’d
And loyal stupidity, quickly forsaking …
The shouts of thousands for freedom arose …’,
And as the fateful year of 1819 progressed,
Hunt was resolute:
The planned mass meeting at St Peter’s Field would be legal,
And it would be peaceful,
He famously declared that people should attend,
‘armed with no other weapon but that of a self-approving conscience; determined not to suffer yourselves to be irritated or excited, by any means whatsoever, to commit any breach of the public peace.’
He even offered himself up to the magistrates beforehand,
To ensure they would have no pretext to stop the meeting,
Yet Bamford excoriated Hunt after the disaster,
Viewing him as an egocentric coward in an egocentric white hat –
In fact, Hunt was arrested on a charge of high treason,
And spent eleven days in solitary confinement;
He wrote to Lord Sidmouth, deploring the
‘illegal conduct of the military towards an unarmed and peaceable people,
met for the purpose of exercising what they thought they had a perfect right to do’;
He wanted to take the Manchester magistrates to court,
He wanted to speak at the victims’ inquests …
On his eventual release on bail
(His charge dropped to one of seditious conspiracy),
Vast crowds greeted him en route to Manchester,
Where he was greeted as a conquering hero,
Celebratory white hats were everywhere,
And green ribbons: ‘Hunt and Liberty’,
‘The daring Champion of unrivall’d fame,
The Patriot Hunt (immortal be his name!),
Has sworn to advocate the suff’rers’ cause,
And bring to light the spurners of the laws’.
Hunt wrote thus: ‘The day is arriving when we shall see whether Corruption has left any virtue in our Courts of Justice, or whether our Constitutional rights were buried in the Tomb of Peterloo.’
The government, of course, praised the Manchester magistrates,
And the dictatorial Six Acts followed,
While Hunt was eventually convicted on a charge
Of unlawful seditious assembling
For the purpose of exciting discontent;
He wrote his transparently egotistical memoirs
In Ilchester gaol, but he still campaigned
For political unions to mobilise for universal suffrage;
He also developed ideas for a radical museum in London:
‘an ocular demonstration that all the wealth of the nation consists of the labour and talent of the useful or working classes’ and ‘where the Radicals from all parts of the kingdom may be seen to meet each other when they are in the metropolis’;
National celebrations followed his release in 1822,
Especially in the industrial north;
A year later he gave a speech in Bristol,
That epitomised the extent of his radicalism:
‘I have had all the magistrates, all the parsons against me … I am an enemy to the injustice that naturally arises from the system on which they act … (loud cheers.) I am an enemy to Corn Laws, game laws, and to all laws that mark a degrading contrast between the lazy and the industrious … There must be high and low, rich and poor, but the honest hard-working man ought to have all the conveniences of life, and some of its comforts (Cheers).’
But despite this attitude, he never wavered from support for universal suffrage –
And so, he had little stock for the Whigs and their eventual 1832 Great Reform Act –
‘All plans for reform which do not embrace universal suffrage, with the protection of the ballot, are unjust in principle … and are calculated … to prolong the slavery and degradation of the intelligent and industrious workmen of the United Kingdom’;
Thus, when he returned to Manchester in 1830,
A crowd of 50,000 awaited him:
‘Although it is now eleven years since you saw me, did you ever hear of me deserting my colours? Did you ever hear of me deserting the cause of the people, even when confined in a gaol? (Loud cries of “we never did.”) I know you have not, and you never will. (“Bravo Hunt.”)
Out in the southern countryside,
In the winter of 1830,
He was seen as a possible mediator,
As the Captain Swing riots rapidly spread,
And then, of course, he was elected as MP,
For the pot-walloper Preston constituency,
In the December 1830 election,
But Hunt would continue to remain aloof,
Even when there was an arguable threat of revolution,
In the furore over the terms of the eventual Reform Act:
‘The lying press had deceived them, or they would know that Lord John Russell …
had never pretended that the bill was to give any substantial benefits to the working classes; they had all along declared that they had proposed it as a means of cementing the tottering institutions of the country, by giving to a larger portion of the middle class the right of exercising the elective franchise. It was their agents and the public press … that … endeavoured to make the people believe that it would benefit the mass of people’;
And when he was rapturously received at Preston,
On Guy Fawkes Night in 1831,
With a 19th century light show,
Flags, banners and a band,
He third person observed:
‘Never before, I believe, was a Member of Parliament so caressed
by so very great a majority of his Constituents, as the Member of the Working Classes of Preston’;
He went on to declare about the crowd of 5,000 that,
‘even if I had been the father of the whole of this … it is impossible
they could have received me with more affection, or with more enthusiasm’;
Such was the fervour and excitement that troops were moved to Preston;
Not that that deterred the Orator,
For when at Leeds, he declared that he was,
‘John Bull’s watchman’:
‘I came only to visit the Working Classes, and no other… I profess only to represent the Working Classes of England in the House of Commons … I am determined the Working Classes shall have the reform they want and by the living God I’ll resign my trust before I desert my Constituents of the Working Classes of England’;
(Immense cheers)
But he received no cheers in the Commons,
On the over a thousand occasions of his speaking there,
With single minded focus on the working class,
And the occasional on women’s rights,
But, the third person self-importance was never far away:
‘They might ask him what good he had done during the year and a half he had been in Parliament? It was true he had done very little, but he took credit for having consistently and fearlessly advocated the right of the working classes to earn not only the necessaries of life, but some of the comforts also – [cheers].’
After defeat in the next election at Preston,
Hunt would still act as a bridge between the 18th century and Chartism,
For example, in his address,
‘To the Unrepresented Seven Millions
of Working Men of England, Ireland, and Scotland’,
‘Therefore my advice is to the working, producing Seven Millions, never to join in any public meeting – never to join in or sign any petition – that does not embrace a prayer for Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, the Ballot, an immediate repeal of the Starvation Act, called the Corn Bill’,
And when a Peeler was killed at a political meeting at Cold Bath Fields,
And after which the jury returned the remarkable verdict of justifiable homicide, Hunt gave forth his inspirational address,
‘To the Friends of Humanity and Justice,
Male and Female, of the United Kingdom’,
‘Let the people meet at all parts of the metropolis;
let the people meet at Manchester, at Bolton, at Blackburn, at Preston;
let them meet in every town and village in the north, in the south, in the east, and in the west; let all people, male and female, do honour and justice
to the brave jurymen of Calthorpe Street’;
This was to be Hunt’s last public appearance
On a London radical platform;
He would be presented with a silver cup,
‘For his unwearied exertions in advocating the cause of liberty,
and promoting the welfare of the labouring community’ –
This was from the Female Union of Preston;
He would revisit the North in his remaining months,
To give the occasional rousing speech,
And after his death, he would adorn inn signs,
And even though it was declared that:
‘Who boldly said in thirty-two,
The Bill was a cheat and vain,
Have we not found his judgement true,
We shall never see his likes again’,
Feargus O’Connor saw himself as Henry Hunt’s heir,
No wonder the Wigan Chartist banner
Foregrounded him with The People’s Charter,
With Hunt’s monument in the background,
A gold and scarlet motto running thus:
‘O’Connor Hunt’s successor’;
His birthday would be a Chartist celebration,
His Ancoats monument would be unveiled
As the 1842 Plug Riots kicked off –
It would be demolished, a generation later,
John Belchem concludes:
‘a bronze plaque was installed in the Manchester Reform Club in 1808,
where it has long been since forgotten by lunching Mancunuan businessmen. A more suitable memorial and greater recognition is due to ‘Orator’ Hunt, the man of the people, the pioneer of working-class radicalism.’
John Belchem ‘Orator’ Hunt Henry Hunt and English Working Class Radicalism
Breviary Stuff Publications 2012
Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 Henry Hunt Tredition Classics
PETER-LOO
From the Manchester Observer 28th August 1819
This is the field of Peter-Loo.
These are the poor reformers who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
These are the butchers, bloodthirsty and bold, who cut, slash’d and maim’d young, defenceless and old, who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
This is Hurly Burly, a blustering knave, and foe to the poor, whom he’d gladly enslave, who led on the butchers, bloodthirsty and bold, who cut, slash’d and maim’d young, defenceless and old, who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
These are the just-asses, gentle and mild, who to keep the peace, broke it, by lucre beguil’d, and sent Hurly Burly, a blustering knave, and foe to the poor, whom he’d gladly enslave, who led on the butchers, bloodthirsty and bold, who cut, slash’d and maim’d young, defenceless and old, who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
William Hone in The Political House that Jack Built followed suit with this description of the Prince Regent:
A dandy of sixty who bows with a grace,
And has taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses and lace;
Who, to tricksters, and fools, leaves the State and its treasure,
And, when Britain’s in tears, sails about at his pleasure.