"If we let you go, you will come again some other time."
It's a telling comment that neatly sums up the reasons behind what became known as the Peterloo massacre. Peterloo was, in the words of EP Thompson, "class war", and it was the culmination of an extended period of class conflict that raged across England, but was particularly focused in the north-west. Some people have been sceptical about the title of Robert Poole's new book because "Uprising" implies for them a insurrectionist revolutionary moment. But what Poole shows very clearly is that this was a period of mass working class discontent and the ruling class responded in the most brutal fashion.
Poole puts Peterloo (and the preceding discontent) into a historical context. One of the most important factors is the war with France, and following Linda Colley's book Britons he argues that "arming the people for national defence" against Revolutionary France was a "revolutionary departure, with profound consequences". The government had won the war through mass mobilisation and heavy taxation. The end of the war brought hopes for respite, but it also left a huge number with experience of military mobilisation. But instead of relief came years of austerity. The government "had not fought off revolution abroad in order to concede democracy at home".
Ironically, the hatred of revolutionary abroad exacerbated the response of the government to demands for Reform. Few in London appear to have an sense of a nuanced response to mass petitioning for relief and reform. Today politicians are adept at dangling the hope of future change, but in the post-Napoleonic war period the response was almost always to use force and the law to stop or undermine social movements. Poole argues that this was particularly an issue in Manchester where the Collegiate church ("autocratic, secretive, enterprising and mired in corruption") ran the "greatest village". It was here that "the conflict between property and democracy was played out". There was, suffice to say, little democracy. Manchester's deputy constable, Joseph Nadin "the real ruler of Manchester" according to a contemporary newspaperman, corruptly ran the city with an iron fist. The Manchester oligarchy had "tight control" over local institutions and used them to try and undermine potential discontent where-ever it reared its head. It was this group who made sure the massacre took place, but they did it in the context of national government policy.
Followers of Tom Paine had left a radical tradition across Lancashire, but growing discontent across the region, particularly in the weaving districts, lead to the eruption of new radical groups, publications and, in particular, meetings. Activists like John Cartwright brought the practice of mass petitioning to the manufacturing areas and he and his comrades became adept at finding ways around the limitations imposed by the law. Demands at the time for reform of parliament are often understood as the start of the movement for democracy - this is of course true, and Poole details at length exactly how rotten and corrupt Parliament in the early 19th century was. But he also points out that Reform was also about economic justice. As he points out, the failure of petitioning by Stockport weavers in August 1816 meant that for them reform came to be seen "as the only option for survival". It would also have driven a strong cynicism towards those at the top of society who ignored their impoverishment.
The precise nature of the demands for reform were well thought out. As Poole says, twenty years before the Chartists five of their six demands were being raised at meetings up and down the country. Through the period from 1816 to 1819 there was a groundswell of radical activity, centered on the working class areas of the north-west, demanding change. These meetings were interpreted as revolutionary threats by the government. Poole details the way that the organisers consciously built these up into a mass movement. The August meeting at St Peter's Field in 1819 would be a climatic event that Henry Hunt in particular saw as the point when the government would have to give way.
The problem was that the government had no intention of giving way. Poole shows how the Peterloo massacre became an almost inevitable reaction to a growing mass working class movement.
This was not a challenge for political power. There were revolutionaries who wanted fundamental change and the symbols of the movement, in particularly the red caps of liberty, were understood as representing radical change. As a result pitched battles were fought between government forces and workers at mass meetings over who got the "colours" and Poole quotes many sources from Peterloo about how the yeomanry took revenge for previous failures to get these symbols. But this was not a conscious revolutionary movement.
Hunt's strategy, the "mass platform movement of 1819" had a problem. As Poole explains:
The post-war radical movement made its appeals in the name of 'the people of England' rather than the working class, to the past rather than the future, and to existing constitutional rights rather than new-found revolutionary principles. There was no master plan in 1819. The natural strategy was improvised... Hunt tried to steer a middle way, using sheer force of numbers to persuade the government to back down without getting himself or his followers arrested and with no real idea of how it would all end... Hunt hoped that the threat of insurrection would make military intervention less likely, but from the governments's point of view it made it all the more necessary.And in August 1819 they did just that. Events at St Peter's Fields were nothing short of premeditated mass murder. The state was teaching the movement a lesson. Hunt's faith "in legal methods" undermined the movement, but that's not to put too much of a blame on him. Hindsight is wonderful, and the government was guilty very much of seeing revolutionary conspiracy where "reformers displayed community".
Two hundred years later, what is the judgement? At the time Peterloo was a massive shock to the movement. But I don't think it was the defeat it is often seen as. The peaceful march to St Peters Fields that was followed by massacre saw an explosion of rioting in the city and there were accounts afterwards of those going home preparing to "return" again but this time with arms. It reminds me of the reaction of the black-working class areas of the United States to the assassination of the pacifist Martin Luther King Jnr. His killing led to an explosion of violence and riot. At the time, the government and its cronies thought they had won. Certainly the media believed it was a famous defeat for reform. But Reform did come and today, with all its limitations, we do have at least limited democracy - thought not yet economic and social justice. In that sense the protesters at Peterloo lost a battle, but the war was won. It is an open question about what might have happened had the movement not had Peterloo. Certainly it would have grown, and might have approached the revolutionary levels that France had experienced. I tend to think that the most likely event would have been a massacre on a different day, in a different place. After all, as Poole shows, Peterloo was in no sense unique.
The 200th anniversary of Peterloo has been much discussed and there have been some wonderful events and exhibitions across Greater Manchester to mark it. Robert Poole's book is, perhaps the best book ever written on the subject. It's well written, exhaustive and covers every aspect of the movement - from the central (though neglected) role of women in the movements, to the forgotten individuals who shouted the slogan "liberty or death" and meant it. It is a masterpiece of historical writing and should be read, not just by those that want to understand Peterloo but by those who want to see how mass struggle was at the heart of the movements that won the rights we have today.
Related Reviews
Riding - Peterloo: The Story of the Manchester Massacre
Navickas - Protest & the Politics of Space & Place 1789-1848
Hobson - Dark Days of Georgian Britain
Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
Hammond & Hammond - The Skilled Labourer
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