REVOLUTION 1819-2019
This was the time when the age of Marx replaced that of Burke,
The time when the ‘swinish multitude’ and ‘the mob’ became a working class,
When there was not just the economic revolution of school textbooks,
But also a presence of a possible political one,
A time when Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man (sic),
Viewed as seditious and libellous
By the nation’s rulers,
Could sell 200,000 copies in a year,
When the population was only around ten million,
And so many could not read – but they listened,
And learned and remembered,
Despite the patriotic cavalcades
And violent contrived disruption of ‘Jacobin’ meetings,
Despite the show trials and government spies,
The arrest of booksellers, the banning of political meetings,
The censorship and illegalisation of criticism of government or monarchy.
This was our land in the 1790s:
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women,
Pitt’s repression at home and war abroad,
Food riots all around our five valleys
(‘We might as well be hanged as starved’),
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/the-1766-food-riots-and-the-hangmans-noose/
The Naval Mutinies of 1797
(“An attempt was made to give to the ships
in mutiny the name of ‘The Floating Republic’.”)
‘Secret Jacobin springs’ were rumoured:
‘Jacobin emissaries and the Corresponding Society …
Jacobin management and influence is at the bottom of this evil’;
The Red Flag was hoisted;
Richard Parker was elected President by the mutinous delegates:
‘… We are not rebels to our country, our country are rebels to us.’
‘I and my brother delegates are all united, and acting in the cause of humanity;
and while life animates the heart of Dick Parker, he will be true to the cause.’
Anything else to rock the ship of state?
Riots against the Militia Act in Scotland,
Wolfe Tone and rebellion in Ireland –
When more people were killed by the army
Than in the ‘Reign of Terror’ in Paris …
Pamphlets such as King Killing;
The Happy Reign of King George the Last;
100, 000 people meeting at Copenhagen Fields, Islington;
The King’s carriage attacked:
‘No War! No King! No Pitt!’
This sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King’ at Drury Lane Theatre:
‘And when George’s Poll
Shall in the basket roll,
Let mercy then control
The Guillotine.’
Anything else?
The Combination Acts of 1799-1800,
Illegalising trade unions,
Colonel Despard and the United Englishmen:
‘Aristocrats to the lamp posts… we’ll hang them … we’ll break them …
We shall have no more nobles and priests.’
The colonel, married to a woman of colour,
Meeting at Furnival’s Inn, Holborn, and in Soho Square,
With the idea of a coup d’etat:
With the provinces to follow the following action:
Attacks on the Tower of London, Woolwich Arsenal,
The Royal Mint, the Bank of England …
But here come the Bow Street Runners,
Arresting the conspirators in the Oakley Arms, Lambeth:
‘You have been separately indicted for conspiracy against his Majesty’s person,
his crown and government, for the purposes of subverting the same
and changing the government of this realm’;
‘Each of you … are to be drawn on hurdles to the place of execution,
where you are to be hanged, but not until you are dead;
for while you are still living, your bodies are to be taken down,
your bowels torn out and burned before your faces,
your heads cut off and your bodies to be divided into quarters
and your heads and quarters to be then at the King’s disposal
and may Almighty God have mercy on your souls.’
(The disembowelling and burning were later rescinded.)
John McNamara whispered to Despard on the scaffold:
‘I am afraid, Colonel, we have got ourselves into a bad situation.’
Despard: ‘There are many better and some worse.’
He then addressed the crowds with a democratic greeting:
‘Fellow citizens’ –
And then coolly informed them that he was about to be executed
Because:
‘He has been a friend to the truth, to liberty and to justice,
because he has been a friend to the poor and oppressed.’
Let’s jump on a few years …
And we have the Luddite action in the north
(More troops stationed there than used against Napoleon),
Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords
on the Disturbed State of Certain Counties, 1812:
‘All the societies in the country are directed … by a Secret Committee … these societies are governed by their respective secret committees … delegates are continually dispatched from one place to another, for the purpose of concerting their plans’,
On top of that,
There were bread riots in Leeds, Sheffield, Barnsley, Carlisle and Bristol;
The Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated;
In Stoke, it was reported that,
‘A man came running down the street, waving his hat round his head
And shouting with frantic joy:
“Perceval is shot, hurrah!”
There were parties in the street,
Drum beats and flags unfurled in Nottingham,
While, locally, we could look at Uley and all around the five valleys:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/class-conflict-in-uley-1795/
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/before-the-luddites/
While back in William Cobbett’s ‘Great Wen’?
Thomas Spence with his plans for agrarian communism,
To end, as he put it:
‘the poor man’s poverty and the rich man’s gout’;
He and his followers, such as William Davison, a man ‘of colour’,
Chalked their egalitarian plans and messages
All over London walls and pavements;
Spence issued medallions with circumferential revolutionary slogans;
Their anthem ended with these lines:
‘From landlords, once set free,
The bells shall ring, we’ll dance and sing
On Spence’s Jubilee’,
Thomas, selling his journal from a baker’s cart:
Pig’s Meat: or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude,
‘a few Contingent parishes have only to declare the land to be theirs and …
other adjacent parishes would immediately follow the example …
thus would a beautiful and powerful New Republic
instantly arise in full vigour’;
His other publications included:
Restorer of Society to its Natural State,
The Real Rights of Man,
The Restorer;
Theirs was a dream of a revolutionary Utopia:
Spensonia!
But the end of war in 1815 and peace at last!
And …
Soldiers and sailors on the streets,
Unemployed weavers,
Corn Laws to protect landlord profits by keeping out cheaper corn imports
(Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary:
‘Man cannot create abundance where Providence has inflicted scarcity’;
‘The alleviation of the difficulties is not to be looked for
from the intervention of Government and Parliament’),
‘Bread or Blood’ riots in East Anglia in 1816,
Hampden Clubs formed for political reform, and
Extension of the suffrage, secret ballot, and annual parliaments,
Republican newspapers such as The Black Dwarf,
And The Gorgon, and William Cobbett’s Political Register
(Derided as ‘Twopenny Trash’ by the patrician ruling class,
Yet it would sell 60,000 a week,
Ten times that of the Times and Observer):
‘If the skulkers will not join you,
If the decent fireside gentry still keep aloof,
Proceed by yourselves’ …
And so we proceed to Spa Fields in 1816,
Thousands present with the tricolour, the Cap of Liberty,
When followers of Thomas Spence attempted something of a coup d’etat,
Trying to scale the walls at the Tower of London,
Devising an ‘Anti-Cavalry Machine’, ‘The Night Cat’,
Designed to suffocate soldiers in their barracks.
The leaders were charged with High Treason,
But the involvement of a government spy
Led to their acquittal;
One year later and we have a sort of hunger march,
The March of the Blanketeers,
The same year, the Pentridge Rising of 1817 –
Another armed uprising of sorts,
With agent-provocateur fabulations (Oliver the Spy) …
But, this time, executions and transportation followed:
‘The jurors of our Lord the King upon their oath present that …
Jeremiah Brandreth … otherwise called the Nottingham Captain …
together with a great multitude of false traitors …
to the number of five hundred and more,
arrayed and armed in a war-like manner,
that is to say with swords, pistols, clubs, bludgeons, and other weapons …
did then with great violence parade and march in a hostile manner
in and through divers villages, places, and public highways …
and did then and there maliciously and traitorously
attempt and endeavour by force of arms
to subvert and destroy the Government and Constitution of the Realm’;
The Black Dwarf remembered Jeremiah Brandreth differently:
FORMED BY NATURE FOR DEEDS OF DARING
HIS SOUL POSSESSED A DEGREE OF PERSONAL COURAGE
AND AN EXTENT OF SELF-COMMAND
WHICH
UNDER THE SMILE OF FORTUNE MIGHT HAVE ENABLED HIM
TO ECLIPSE THE FAME OF MARLBOROUGH
AND RIVAL THE GLORY OF NAPOLEON’;
William Turner cried out on the gallows:
‘This is all Oliver and the Government’,
But a parliamentary secret committee talked of:
‘some general plan of simultaneous or connected insurrection;
the object … after consolidating a sufficient force,
to march upon London,
and there to overthrow the existing Government
and to establish a republic’;
And from Manchester:
‘the lower orders
are everywhere meeting in large bodies
and are very clamorous’ about
‘a general union of the lower orders throughout the kingdom’;
The suspension of Habeas Corpus followed in 1817,
And the Seditious Meetings Act,
The use of government spies and agents-provocateurs
(In passing, btw,
even if the government did use spies
and agents-provocateurs,
to furnish the justificatory evidence
necessary for policies of repression,
we have to say that the plots still happened),
The spread of barracks: 26, 000 troops stationed in barracks,
Rather than in inns where they might become disaffected:
The Black Dwarf 1817:
‘The army and the people are … separated from each other … no intercourse must be allowed … lest the soldier should begin to remember that he is a man’;
William Hone, 1817:
‘Our Lord who art in the Treasury,
whatsoever be thy name,
thy power be prolonged,
thy will be done throughout the Empire …
Turn us not out of our places,
But keep us in the House of Commons,
The land of Pensions and Plenty;
And deliver us from the People.
Amen.’
Joseph Swann, a newspaper seller,
Imprisoned for four and a half years in 1819,
For selling ‘treasonable material’:
‘Off with your fetters; spurn the slavish yoke,
None, now, or never, can your chain be broke;
Swift then, rise and give the fatal stroke.’
In 1819, the ban on political meetings ended,
There were calls for female suffrage in the North,
40,000 Glasgow weavers met to petition the Prince Regent
for assistance so as to emigrate to Canada –
But for radicals, the answer would have to be universal suffrage,
And the secret ballot and annual parliaments;
The summer would be the time for a signal meeting,
Manchester to be the venue
(Hunt at Smithfield, 21st July 1819:
‘After the first day of 1820 we cannot, conscientiously,
consider ourselves … as bound by any persons styling themselves
our representatives, other than those who shall be
fully, freely and fairly chosen by the voices and votes
of the largest proportion of the members of the state’),
With Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt to address 60,000 people
(‘Libellous, seditious, factious, levelling, revolutionary,
Republican, democratical, atheistical villain’)
All in orderly procession, dressed in their Sunday best,
All following Hunt’s request that they should bring
‘No other weapon that that of an approving conscience’,
Banners were profuse:
UNITY & STRENGTH;
PARLIAMENTS ANNUAL – SUFFRAGE UNIVERSAL;
Red caps of liberty at this perfectly legal meeting,
With nigh on 20% of Lancashire’s population present,
But in rode the Yoemanry,
And then the Hussars, flashing their swords
(Nearly three foot long and weighing two ibs two ounces)
Within minutes eleven dead and over four hundred wounded,
Sprawled everywhere on the ground were
‘Hats, bonnets, shawls, shoes, musical instruments …
In the midst stood the hustings with its broken flag-staffs
and tattered banners’;
Samuel Bamford described it thus:
‘the hustings remained,
with a few broken and hewed flag staves erect
and a torn and gashed banner or two drooping,
whilst over the whole field were strewed the caps,
bonnets, hats, shawls and shoes …
trampled, torn and bloody.
The Yoemanry had dismounted –
Some were easing their horses’ girths,
Others adjusting their accoutrements;
And some were wiping their sabres.
Several mounds of human bodies still remained as they had fallen,
Crushed down and smothered.
Some of these still groaning – some with staring eyes,
Were gasping for breath and others would never breath again …’
Eleven dead and over four hundred wounded;
The Prince Regent offered his congratulations for
‘prompt, decisive and efficient measures
for the preservation of the public tranquillity’;
Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary, in private:
‘an essential principle of government … the confidence of the magistracy …
a readiness to support them in all honest, reasonable, and well-intended acts,
without inquiring too minutely whether they might
have performed their duty a little better or a little worse.’
The local authorities thanked the Yoemanry:
‘Their extreme forbearance exercised
when insulted and defied by the rioters’;
And so that was the meeting at St Peter’s Fields,
Peterloo, 1819,
Witnessed thus, by Lieutenant Joliffe, 15th Hussars:
‘although nine tenths of the sabre wounds were caused by the Hussars,
it redounds to the human forbearance
of the men of the 15th that more wounds were not received,’;
Peterloo, followed by the dictatorial Six Acts,
And Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy –
‘I met Murder on the way
It had a face like Castlereagh …
Ye are Many, They are few’ …
Peterloo, followed by the spy-riddled 1820 Cato Street Conspiracy:
Arthur Thistlewood, Watson and co. organised
The Committee of Two Hundred,
They met surreptitiously at the White Lion in Wych Street,
Planning a coup d’etat with the formation of a Provisional Government
(Thistlewood’s planned speech:
‘Your tyrants are destroyed.
The friends of liberty are called upon to come forward.
The provisional government is now sitting.’),
The spark – the assassination of the cabinet in revenge for Peterloo,
Whilst they were dining at Lord Harrowby’s,
The idea being to decapitate the cabinet
(Henry Bathurst’s would have been included, btw),
And parade the heads on spikes through London’s chartered streets:
James Ings:
‘ I will enter the room first, I will go in with a brace of pistols,
a cutlass and a knife in my pocket
and after two swordsmen have despatched them,
I will cut off every head that is in that room
And Lord Castlereagh’s and Lord Sidmouth’s
I will bring away in a bag …
As soon as I get into the room I shall say:
“Well my Lords, I have as good men here as your Manchester Yoemanry.
Enter Citizens, and do your duty.”’
But the Bow Street Runners broke into the stable loft in Cato Street,
The conspirators were taken prisoner after a skirmish;
Whilst they were held at the Horse and Groom,
A search of the loft revealed
‘a great quantity of pistols, blunderbusses, swords and pikes’;
Charges of high treason followed,
For the conspirators ‘ did compass, imagine, invent, devise
And intend to deprive and depose our said Lord the King of …
The style, honour and kingly name
Of the imperial crown of this realm’;
Secondly, they intended
‘To move and excite insurrection, rebellion and war against the King …
and to subvert and alter the legislature, rule and government
and to bring and put the King to death’;
Ings emphasised the role of Edward the Spy:
‘The Attorney-General knew …
when I was before Lord Sidmouth,
a gentleman said,
Lord Sidmouth knew all about this for about two month’;
Bruit said,
‘Should I die, by this case,
I have been seduced by a villain,
who, I have no doubt,
has been employed by Government’;
Thistlewood: ‘Liberty and Justice
Have been driven from confines by a set of villains,
Whose thirst for blood is only to be equalled …
By their plunder’;
Apart from castigating Edwards, he spoke also of Peterloo:
‘when infants were sabred in their mothers’ arms
and the breast from which they drew the tide of life,
was severed from the parent’s body’;
‘High treason was committed against the people of Manchester,
I resolved that the lives of the instigators of the massacre
should atone for the souls of the murdered innocents’,
But Black Cap Chief Justice was unmoved:
‘You and each of you; be taken here to the gaol from whence you came
and from thence that you be drawn upon a hurdle to a place of execution
and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead; and that
afterwards your heads shall be severed from your bodies
and your bodied be divided into four quarters
to be disposed of as his majesty shall think fit.
And may God in his infinite goodness have mercy on your souls’;
Thistlewood disdainfully took snuff as he listened to the verdict;
The date chosen: a hurried May 1st 1820 –
Thistlewood:
‘The sooner we go, sir, the better’;
And on the scaffold, Tidd and Thistlewood shook hands:
‘Well, Mr Thistlewood. How do you do?’
‘I was never better.’
After they had hung for half an hour,
Their bodies were taken down, de-hooded,
And their heads were placed on the block:
‘This is the head of Arthur Thistlewood, the traitor.’
One by one, the heads were shown,
But the crowd shouted:
‘Bring out Edwards!
Shoot that bloody murderer!’
Windows were smashed afterwards …
The Home Office had received a plenitude of anonymous letters
Before May 1st, threatening violence:
‘To Ministers, Privy Councillors, Bloody-minded wretches –
Ye are now brooding with hellish delight
On the sacrifice ye intend to make on those poor creatures
Ye took out of Cato Street on pretence
Of punishing them for what your own horrid spies
And agents instigated … But know this,
Ye demons, on an approaching day
And in an hour when you least expect it
Ye yourselves shall fall a sacrifice to
The just vengeance of an oppressed
And suffering people who shall behold
Your bloody corpses dragged in Triumph through their streets.’
The 1820s saw the rise of trade union action again
(The consequence being the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834),
And then in 1830, the Captain Swing agricultural riots,
When southern England was ablaze,
Followed by the crisis of 1830-32 over parliamentary reform,
When the Whig government divided the middle from the working class
(‘Seducing the bourgeoisie’),
By giving the vote to householders on a stiff property qualification,
Thereby ensuring continued aristocratic dominance,
And preventing any possibility of revolution.
In the words of Macaulay:
“Reform that ye may preserve”
(Remember! The word ‘democracy’
was a pejorative then to our rulers),
But when it seemed that the House of Lords was determined
To prevent any semblance of reform
and even limited extension of the franchise,
Riots followed at Derby, Nottingham and Bristol,
There was a run on gold at the Bank of England,
There were rumours of armed marches from the provinces on London,
Of refusals to pay taxes,
Of mutinies in the army and refusals to obey orders,
Windows were smashed in the houses of infamous reactionaries,
Such as the Duke of Wellington,
There were strikes in the industrial north, midlands and Wales …
An Interlude not The Prelude:
Wordsworth might have grown up ‘fostered alike by beauty and by fear’,
But it was fear alone that stalked him in 1817,
Seeing treason and sedition, ‘even among these mountains’,
Informing the prime minister of the necessity
Of an armed presence in the capital,
Otherwise, ‘four and twenty hours would not elapse
before the tricoloured flag would be planted …’
An Epilogue of Sorts
When next in London, let’s walk the sites of these radical pubs,
Where treason and sedition were discussed as standard:
The Two Bells, the Flying Horse, the Ham and Windmill,
The Bleeding Heart; the Coach and Horses;
The Brown Bear and the Black Horse.
The Country 1830-32,
Through they eyes of those who lived then:
Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal Nov 4 1830
‘The Duke of Wellington was ‘hooted and hissed’ at ‘wherever they could see him’ at the opening of Parliament by ‘the people who were … very disorderly’ and called out ‘No police! … and in various parts of the town attacked the police most furiously … we have taken great precautions against the mobs. Troops and artillery have been brought to London, the guards doubled, the police all on the alert … wherever the mobs have assimilated they have been routed & severely beat by the police … Hunt and Cobbett have opened a meeting house they call the Rotunda near Blackfriars Bridge, and there they assemble & harangue crowds of the lowest order in the most seditious manner, and from that place they issue in large bodies & come & alarm the … West End … I hope the mob will soon be tired of getting nothing but blows from the police.’
29th November
‘The country is in a terrible state, thanks to all the people who have been lauding the French Revolution up to the skies and dinning in the ears of the people that, if they choose to rise, nothing can resist them. The consequence has been that all over the country the peasantry, who in many parts really do suffer under great privations, have been worked upon by incendiaries & agitators & have burnt rickyards & broke machines; in many parts there have been violent conflicts between the mob & the constables.’
Mary Frampton
‘The unpopularity of the Duke of Wellington was extreme, so as to render his life in danger from the pressures of the crowd, stones being thrown at him &c.’
The Times 9 December 1830
‘if enemies to universal suffrage .. it is because such a principle would be, in effect, a narrowing of the representative system, by the virtual exclusion of all influence derived from property, and an absolute surrender … to a single class – a class moved to frequent warfare … by the extremes of destitution and desperation acting upon incurable ignorance, prejudice and distrust.’
Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal 16 May 1831
‘The Duke has lost heart entirely. He thinks the revolution is begun and that nothing can save us … he foresees nothing but civil war & convulsion.’
Mrs Mundy to Lady H. Frampton, Markeaton, 15 October 1831
‘MY DEAR MOTHER … Conceive how horrid it was on Sunday morning, just as we had finished our doleful breakfast, having been up all night, and having the yells of the multitude and the crash of windows, and doors still ringing in our ears to have a gentleman (My Meynell) ride up, saying that he was just come from Derby (where he had expected to be annihilated by the mob …), that they had forced the town gaol and liberated twenty-three prisoners, were proceeding to the county gaol … and were coming on to us … Fortunately the gaoler made a gallant defence, which delayed the rioters until the dragoons arrived from Nottingham, which was only just in time, as they were preparing to scale the walls … We are very thankful for our preservation … for the Nottingham rioters plundered much more; and at Colwick, near Nottingham – Mr Muster’s place – they entered, seized the furniture and pictures, which they made into a bonfire before the door; and utterly ruined it.’
Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal 23rd October 1831
‘…the mob broke the windows of several houses. They broke all the Duke of Wellington’s windows in broad daylight … there was not a single policeman came till the mob had been throwing stones for 55 minutes & then not one man was taken up.’
The Reverend J.L. Jackson to C.B. Wollaston, Clifton 31st October 1831
‘…the knots of men standing about the streets were of the most awful character. Three individuals were killed by the soldiers and more wounded. In the afternoon we heard that the multitude was assembled in much greater masses, and about four o’clock we saw the new City and County Gaol in flames; afterwards the Bridewell and another prison in the Gloucester Road … In the course of the evening Queen’s Square was fired and the Bishop’s palace … the … Mansion House … the Custom House … Other property to an immense amount is also destroyed. This morning an actual slaughter has taken place; it is supposed … that above seventy persons have been killed, besides a large number who have been wounded. The military charged through some of the principal streets.’
Charles Greville’s Journal 11 November 1831
‘The country was beginning to sleep after the fatigues of Reform, when it was rattled up by the business of Bristol, which for brutal ferocity and wanton unprovoked violence may vie with some of the worst scenes of the French Revolution … nothing could exceed the ferocity of the populace, the imbecility of the magistracy or the good conduct of the troops. More punishment was inflicted by them than has been generally been known, and some hundreds were killed or severely wounded by the sabre. One body of dragoons pursued a rabble of colliers into the country and covered the fields and roads with the bodies of wounded wretches, making a severe example of them …’
Lord Fitzroy Somerset to the Duke of Wellington, Horse Guards, 2 Nov 1831
‘MY DEAR LORD
… The force we shall have in and about London on Monday next …
The 1st Life Guards, from Windsor to Hyde Park Riding House.
The 2nd Life Guards, Regent’s Park Barracks.
The Blues, Hyde Park Barracks.
The 9th Lancers, King’s Stables, Pimlico.
The 7th Dragoon guards … to assemble either at the Obelisk
or Vauxhall Bridge.
One squadron of the Greys … to move up from Croydon to Vauxhall Bridge or some other convenient spot.
Four guns, Riding Establishment, St. John’s Wood.
Four guns or more, Carlton House stables.
One Battalion of Foot Guards and detachment of Artillery, Tower.
Four battalions of Foot Guards, Portman Street Barracks, Knightsbridge Barracks, Mews Barracks, Westminster quarters daily duties.
500 marines, from Woolwich, at Deptford Dockyard or the Obelisk.
To these four guns might be added.
This is all the force we can at present muster, and the garrisons at Portsmouth and Chatham are not as strong as they ought to be.
Your most faithful and affectionate,
Fitzroy Somerset.
The Poor Man’s Guardian, No. 22, Saturday 19 November 1831
‘BURNING A BISHOP IN EFFIGY!
Remember, remember,
The Fifth of November
Between fifteen and twenty thousand persons paraded the streets … For, lo! And behold! Here is a fat, bloated, blundering bishop … we hereby commit his infernal body to the flames … in the certain belief that eternal damnation will be his portion, and that he will never inherit a glorious resurrection.
Good Lord! Put down aristocrats;
Let boroughmongers be abhorred;
And from all tithes and shovel hats
Forthwith deliver us Good Lord!’
Lord Lyttelton to Lady Lyttelton
‘London 9 May
My Yoemanry Commission I shall probably … resign … God grant that I may not be obliged again to turn out again … for the suppression of a local riot.’
The Times on the demand for gold at the bank, 15 May
‘MONEY-MARKET and CITY INTELLIGENCE
Monday evening
The demand for gold at the Bank is increasing … According to the best estimate that can be found, about 1,000,000l in gold may have been drawn out.
16 May
A steady demand for gold is kept up at the Bank … Every man of common understanding is convinced that the gold in the Bank will be exhausted in a week if a Tory ministry is appointed in the face of the obstinate determination against it on the part of the people.’
Alexander Somerville’s Autobiography of a Working Man
‘At Birmingham, two hundred thousand persons … resolved to pay no King’s taxes, until the bill passed, and, if need be, to remove bodily the whole two hundred thousand of them, and encamp, with other political unions, on Hampstead … Heath, to be near parliament … It was rumoured that the Birmingham political union was to march for London that night; and that we were to stop it on the road. We had been daily and nightly booted and saddled, with ball cartridge in each man’s possession, for three days ready to turn out at a moment’s notice. But until this day we had rough sharpened no swords … to make them inflict a ragged wound … we implored the people … not to allow rioting, window breaking, or any outrage on property; else, if refusing to draw swords on them, in the event of our being brought before a court martial for such disobedience, we would have no justification.’
Hobhouse’s Recollections
19May
‘I went to Place. He told me that there would, positively, have been a rising if Wellington had received power yesterday. Everything was arranged for it, he himself would not have slept at home …’
22 May
‘Charles Fox [MP] … said to King, “By recalling Lord Grey, you have saved the country from civil war.”
“Yes,” said the King, “for the present.”
The Peterloo Massacre, Robert Reid, Windmill Books 2018
Artisans and Sans-Culottes Gwyn A. Williams Libris 1989
Democracy and Reform D.G. Wright Longmans Seminar Series 1981
The Floating Republic Manwaring & Dobree Pen and Sword Books 2004
The Cato Street Conspiracy John Stanhope Jonathan Cape 1962
Reform or Revolution E.A. Smith Alan Sutton 1992
Waterloo to Peterloo R.J. White Heinemann 1957 (It was Bernard Crick’s copy!)
The Lives of … The Leaders of the Cato Street Conspiracy … Primary Source Edition Nabu Public Domain Reprints
Enemies of the State M. J. Trow Pen & Sword 2010
A new poem about Peterloo
06
Dec
A new poem about Peterloo
Lynette Cawthra
People use our collections for all sorts of reasons. A poet called Oliver Lomax came in recently to read some of our eye-witness accounts of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. He is now generously sharing his resulting poem:
Peterloo
I beg you will endeavour to preserve the most
perfect silence. Put your hand to the ground and
take its pulse.
The time of the martyr is at your feet. A climate
of angels lying low in a buried world, fragment
seeds of liberty,
sixpences of bone spent for us. This is the archaeology
of the heart, be meticulous with it and know that
their ballad is in your blood.
Their cries still rent the air outside the room
where The Sex Pistols played, outside the rooms
chasing Michelin stars,
where borough mongers and their abettors from
an umbilical distance away severed the contract
of the heart.
As hussars’ sabres cut the seams of heaven
and bled down on to the field a holy alliance,
not to be petitioned by prayer.
A flock that had drawn from the four corners of the
North West, a forest of men, women, children and liberty
cut down, made to buckle in its bloom.
The ball in their right breast a Tory sphere
that still orbits the poor today as they rust in a
half-life harbour.
Eclipses the truth on bedroom tax suicides and
blots out the sun on the homeless wards. All evidence
must be received, we are all the body of John Lees.
Look up two hundred years and see time like
a mirage, the ghosts of us, hold their dreams aloft
like something new born.
And let us sit beside poverty, have a word in its ear.
Say, listen ‘We are here’.
