Video performances bring the people of Peterloo to life
The event known to history as the Peterloo Massacre took place on August 16, 1819, when a large gathering of working class men, women and children was illegally attacked and dispersed. They had come to hear the famous radical orator Henry Hunt speak about parliamentary reform and had assembled peacefully in their thousands in St. Peter's field in the industrial city of Manchester. Manchester at that time had no parliamentary representation at all, let alone votes for working people.
 | The magistrates of Manchester, watching the assembly from an upstairs window, panicked and sent a troop of undisciplined and possibly drunk Yeoman Cavalry into the crowd to arrest Hunt before he could speak. The cavalry, composed of the sons and social peers of local mill owners, decided to confiscate the banners carried by various groups, and they pushed their way into the tightly-packed crowd, hacking with their swords. Mayhem ensued, hundreds were injured and at least 19 were killed. The melee became known as "Peterloo,"; a mocking reference to Waterloo, contrasting the soldiers at Waterloo with the brutality of the Yeoman cavalry who attacked defenseless people. |
I included the Peterloo Massacre in the final book of my Mansfield Trilogy. Speaking for myself, I am more interested in understanding the point of view of the authorities than I am in condemning them. Plus, I wanted to represent the views of both sides in my novel, not create a one-sided piece of agitprop like Mike Lee's Peterloo movie of 2018. After researching the original accounts of the massacre and the events leading up to that day, I felt that there were sincere and well-meaning people on both sides as well as people determined to manipulate public opinion by pushing their own agendas. I did not see it simply as Goodies (the working class) vs the Baddies (the government and the capitalist mill-owners).
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