Peterloo Anniversary today

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elwaclaret
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Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:17 pm

The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter’s Field, Manchester #OnThisDay 1819 when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000 people who had assembled to demand parliamentary reform. At least 15 protesters were killed and 700 seriously injured.

It was seemingly the end of Hunt’s crusade for universal suffrage, a mantel soon picked up by the Suffragettes. A fascinating and complicated event from history. I asked a leading Peterloo historian why no-one from Burnley seemed to be there…. The Blackburn Meeting had been the weeks before, when magistrates had tried to rush the stage to claim the banners and (red) liberty caps. Several people from Burnley were hung in the town weeks later.

A very important event in the long fight for equal rights for all
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Billy Balfour » Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:27 pm

We should never forget the sacrifice these brave people made for us.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Garnerssoap » Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:51 pm

Not much has changed

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Rowls » Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:58 pm

We should be grateful that the figures killed are so trifling in comparison to what most countries have gone through (or are attempting) to achieve suffrage and democracy.

We also need to be grateful that it was so long ago now, while holding it as a key event in our history.

We should cherish our democracy and disagree well with others who have different opinions to us. Everybody should think long and hard before spouting trite nonsense like "politicians are all in it for themselves" or complete and utter rubbish like "nothing's changed since the 19th century".

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Wed Aug 17, 2022 12:39 am

Rowls wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:58 pm
We should be grateful that the figures killed are so trifling in comparison to what most countries have gone through (or are attempting) to achieve suffrage and democracy.

We also need to be grateful that it was so long ago now, while holding it as a key event in our history.

We should cherish our democracy and disagree well with others who have different opinions to us. Everybody should think long and hard before spouting trite nonsense like "politicians are all in it for themselves" or complete and utter rubbish like "nothing's changed since the 19th century".
With respect Rowls, you are quite wrong about how little blood has been spilled. Do you know how many Burnley reformists were hung in the town square? It may be yes, but the chances are no (without some serious searching) because news and history has been repressed.

Several were shot in Blackburn, others hung quietly in Burnley, as happened in every town/villlage all the way to York. That is not allowing for the Bristol Riots, or the quiet roundup and execution of organisers of Reform Rallies, Pamphleteers, Luddites, and countless other organisations, all over the country…. Etc etc. etc all now being looked at NOW often for the first time. And what is more it is undeniable because the Lords and Ladies and the records of parliament are hoisting the message loud and clear… all figures quoted by historians are by matter of ethics conservative and the figures are mind boggling just in the nineteenth century…

And I might add the middle class stiff upper lip, didn’t exist you were either ‘entitled’ or not even to have a say, Landed Gentry, Royal Councillors (High Judges) stitched up and exploited everyone, even the new industrial rich were only aloud to mix due to the huge dowry they paid for Ladies hands… Then came the Marshall’s, minor landowners and dogs bodies of the Landowner’s, the artisan traders and yeomanry below them… on and on. All encouraged to look down at those below them and not question those above them…. is it really that different, apart from killing peasants is now frowned upon ?
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Corky » Wed Aug 17, 2022 8:23 am

I find it difficult to cherish our democracy as Rowls suggests when we have a pair of halfwits squabbling at each other in an attempt to become our next PM. A competition that only tory party members can vote on and of those 160,000 members, 90% are white, over 60 and live in the south of England. In my view much reform is still needed with regards to the Monarchy, the establishment and Parliament to bring about a fairer and more just society.
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Silkyskills1 » Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:58 am

A truly shocking episode in this country's history.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Wed Aug 17, 2022 10:39 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 12:39 am
With respect Rowls, you are quite wrong about how little blood has been spilled. Do you know how many Burnley reformists were hung in the town square? It may be yes, but the chances are no (without some serious searching) because news and history has been repressed.

Several were shot in Blackburn, others hung quietly in Burnley, as happened in every town/villlage all the way to York. That is not allowing for the Bristol Riots, or the quiet roundup and execution of organisers of Reform Rallies, Pamphleteers, Luddites, and countless other organisations, all over the country…. Etc etc. etc all now being looked at NOW often for the first time. And what is more it is undeniable because the Lords and Ladies and the records of parliament are hoisting the message loud and clear… all figures quoted by historians are by matter of ethics conservative and the figures are mind boggling just in the nineteenth century…

And I might add the middle class stiff upper lip, didn’t exist you were either ‘entitled’ or not even to have a say, Landed Gentry, Royal Councillors (High Judges) stitched up and exploited everyone, even the new industrial rich were only aloud to mix due to the huge dowry they paid for Ladies hands… Then came the Marshall’s, minor landowners and dogs bodies of the Landowner’s, the artisan traders and yeomanry below them… on and on. All encouraged to look down at those below them and not question those above them…. is it really that different, apart from killing peasants is now frowned upon ?
The debate in the House of Commons shortly afterwards suggests that the Georgian / Victorian era may have been slightly more nuanced than you suggest here. Maybe it wasn't so easy for the poor to have their say, but there were also rich men and parliamentarians who would have that say on their behalf.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1 ... onsChamber

Shaftesbury is only one example. Wilberforce. Gladstone. Dickens. Nightingale. Fry. Barnardo. Booth. Even Jeremy Bentham, who used to post regularly on here.

The vast reforms and improvements of the Victorian era didn't "just happen", they were worked for and fought for by the privileged classes (some of them) as well as by the working classes.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:35 pm

dsr wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 10:39 pm
The debate in the House of Commons shortly afterwards suggests that the Georgian / Victorian era may have been slightly more nuanced than you suggest here. Maybe it wasn't so easy for the poor to have their say, but there were also rich men and parliamentarians who would have that say on their behalf.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1 ... onsChamber

Shaftesbury is only one example. Wilberforce. Gladstone. Dickens. Nightingale. Fry. Barnardo. Booth. Even Jeremy Bentham, who used to post regularly on here.

The vast reforms and improvements of the Victorian era didn't "just happen", they were worked for and fought for by the privileged classes (some of them) as well as by the working classes.
I am well aware of mavericks, but lets not carried away. The Prince Regent and Sidmouth were tyrants - lord Liverpool was George’s puppet and George thought so much of the working class he sent a letter congratulating the Manchester Magistrates on their successful operation at Peterloo. Fox was hounded out of Parliament for calling for reform just a few weeks before the Blanket March… another that led to treason charge and the death penalty. But yes Henry Hunt himself was well to do… most of the other MP’s from Fox’s faction were hounded out, some even fleeing to America as warrants were issued.

Yours are a list of exceptions… I’ll add Lord Byron (Lord of the manor at Spotland, Rochdale) to that. Dickens wasn’t gentry he was the son of a merchant I think. He got into Journalism after being a runner apprentice. That is where his eyes were opened as he travelled around the country following stories… but yes his subsequant works did a lot to create a social conscience, and his later books brought a shift in attitudes, at least in some.

You also had the rise of the Co-operative and Methodism splintered leading to several politically aware groups that eventually became a collective as the Labour Party and at least a couple on your list of philanthropists, also came from that source.

But like I said… the exceptions, massively outnumbered by the type who used to push policy for the East India Company… as though the vast profits pouring in from Lancashire were not filling their Wallets fast enough. Let’s not even mention what they were also up to in Waterford… and everywhere else they smelt profit.

But their real flavour is in the complete misrepresentation of the The Luddites, which has been repeated until the last few years, puppet fashion to generation after generation. The Luddites were artisan traders, suddenly propelled from upper middle class to poverty, it was started by Lacemakers… hardly the mindless thugs we were taught at school.

The archives are being poured over like never before and the history books are reflecting that… We are now dealing with Warts and All History, not pretty Victorian ideas of how we’d have liked it to be…
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:53 pm

Even if it was a great mass of tyrants with just a few mavericks opposing them, it's pretty clear from the improvements made in the Victorian era that the mavericks won the day.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:55 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:35 pm
But their real flavour is in the complete misrepresentation of the The Luddites, which has been repeated until the last few years, puppet fashion to generation after generation. The Luddites were artisan traders, suddenly propelled from upper middle class to poverty, it was started by Lacemakers… hardly the mindless thugs we were taught at school.
What is it about lacemaking that prevents a lacemaker from being a mindless thug?

I thought it was well known, and well taught, that the Luddites objected to mechanisation because it cost them their jobs. Which has been the fate throughout the ages when someone builds a better mousetrap. From what I was taught, the Luddites saw someone else doing better than them, and tried to destroy the livelihoods of those people doing better. No?

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:07 am

dsr wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:53 pm
Even if it was a great mass of tyrants with just a few mavericks opposing them, it's pretty clear from the improvements made in the Victorian era that the mavericks won the day.
You think? I think it is more the level of incompetence shown by the Victorians, meant that by the turn of the Century they had strangled the golden goose with the insatiable greed. Not happy with having a virtually monopoly on the cotton trade they exported the machines to India and killed the Lancashire Cotton Trade without a second thought. A lot of the Middle class ‘do-gooding’ had completely the opposite effect on the Working class… they patronised and dehumanised every bit as much as they helped. The most of the changes came with necessity after WW1, the country had been stale and in decline for many years.. again largely due to greed, they sold all the tools to make Britain redundant: that is why the Navy was so important, without controlling trade we were knackered.

Any idea the Victorian period was anything but a period of exploitation and abuse is buying into the very mythology they created.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:30 am

dsr wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:55 pm
What is it about lacemaking that prevents a lacemaker from being a mindless thug?

I thought it was well known, and well taught, that the Luddites objected to mechanisation because it cost them their jobs. Which has been the fate throughout the ages when someone builds a better mousetrap. From what I was taught, the Luddites saw someone else doing better than them, and tried to destroy the livelihoods of those people doing better. No?
No. The lacemakers made fitted stockings. The machines made silk-lagging which was sawn. The cheaper poorer quality flooded the market, making the well to do’s drop the fashion. The machines couldn’t replace them them just killed their trade.

The Yorkshire weavers, was very different. They lost their trade, and the pay/ or use of the factory was tantamount to slave labour. The Government had huge stores of wheat that they refused to release, but their agents where selling at three times market price… most of the Yorkshire and the Rossendale luddites were starving. Most of the leadership were rounded up and hung. Manchester was more the first throws of the reform movement, and survivors were part of the Blanket March… where Sidmouth first rejected their petitions ( their legal right, even though Parliament kept changing the rules, they changed their petitions too) but Byron (or Possbily a Foxite) accepted it… Byron was one of only seven who wanted it discussed in Parliament, it wasn’t.

For all machine breaking was a very minor part… but was spun by Parliament to make it the image we still have.

Change came of necessity, when the Toffs really thought it was about to blow.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:41 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:07 am
You think? I think it is more the level of incompetence shown by the Victorians, meant that by the turn of the Century they had strangled the golden goose with the insatiable greed. Not happy with having a virtually monopoly on the cotton trade they exported the machines to India and killed the Lancashire Cotton Trade without a second thought. A lot of the Middle class ‘do-gooding’ had completely the opposite effect on the Working class… they patronised and dehumanised every bit as much as they helped. The most of the changes came with necessity after WW1, the country had been stale and in decline for many years.. again largely due to greed, they sold all the tools to make Britain redundant: that is why the Navy was so important, without controlling trade we were knackered.

Any idea the Victorian period was anything but a period of exploitation and abuse is buying into the very mythology they created.
Free education up to age 12? Bank holidays? Wakes weeks? Abolition of child labour? Do they get no credit at all?

Incidentally, the cotton trade wasn't killed by 1901. I think it took about 60 years longer than that. Wikipedia says that peak cotton production was 1912 and India's mechanisation wasn't until after WW2. Which is as I remember it too.
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:51 am

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:30 am
No. The lacemakers made fitted stockings. The machines made silk-lagging which was sawn. The cheaper poorer quality flooded the market, making the well to do’s drop the fashion. The machines couldn’t replace them them just killed their trade.

The Yorkshire weavers, was very different. They lost their trade, and the pay/ or use of the factory was tantamount to slave labour. The Government had huge stores of wheat that they refused to release, but their agents where selling at three times market price… most of the Yorkshire and the Rossendale luddites were starving. Most of the leadership were rounded up and hung. Manchester was more the first throws of the reform movement, and survivors were part of the Blanket March… where Sidmouth first rejected their petitions ( their legal right, even though Parliament kept changing the rules, they changed their petitions too) but Byron (or Possbily a Foxite) accepted it… Byron was one of only seven who wanted it discussed in Parliament, it wasn’t.

For all machine breaking was a very minor part… but was spun by Parliament to make it the image we still have.

Change came of necessity, when the Toffs really thought it was about to blow.
So people didn't want the product the lacemakers were selling, so they had to find other jobs? Well, I see why they objected. But surely the mechanisation that meant poor people could afford stockings, as opposed to the system the Luddites wanted when they could not afford stockings, was a benefit ot the poor (or at least, to most of them)?

If there was more to the Luddites than smashing up machinery, what was it? What else made them distinct from all the other people who have lost their industry through the ages?

(Incidentally, lace making in Clones, Ireland, went on long after the Luddite era. Maybe the Luddite lacemakers just weren't good enough at making what the market wanted to buy.)

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:19 am

This is the shortest that hits most the points. I’ve done a paper on Luddites as part of my degree, but I wont put you through that lol (I’m not sure I copied the whole article but there was a lot of tittle tattle introduction before this…

From the Smithstonian Magazine online..

Despite their modern reputation, the original Luddites were neither opposed to technology nor inept at using it. Many were highly skilled machine operators in the textile industry. Nor was the technology they attacked particularly new. Moreover, the idea of smashing machines as a form of industrial protest did not begin or end with them. In truth, the secret of their enduring reputation depends less on what they did than on the name under which they did it. You could say they were good at branding.
The Luddite disturbances started in circumstances at least superficially similar to our own. British working families at the start of the 19th century were enduring economic upheaval and widespread unemployment. A seemingly endless war against Napoleon’s France had brought “the hard pinch of poverty,” wrote Yorkshire historian Frank Peel, to homes “where it had hitherto been a stranger.” Food was scarce and rapidly becoming more costly. Then, on March 11, 1811, in Nottingham, a textile manufacturing center, British troops broke up a crowd of protesters demanding more work and better wages.
That night, angry workers smashed textile machinery in a nearby village. Similar attacks occurred nightly at first, then sporadically, and then in waves, eventually spreading across a 70-mile swath of northern England from Loughborough in the south to Wakefield in the north. Fearing a national movement, the government soon positioned thousands of soldiers to defend factories. Parliament passed a measure to make machine-breaking a capital offense.
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But the Luddites were neither as organized nor as dangerous as authorities believed. They set some factories on fire, but mainly they confined themselves to breaking machines. In truth, they inflicted less violence than they encountered. In one of the bloodiest incidents, in April 1812, some 2,000 protesters mobbed a mill near Manchester. The owner ordered his men to fire into the crowd, killing at least 3 and wounding 18. Soldiers killed at least 5 more the next day.
Earlier that month, a crowd of about 150 protesters had exchanged gunfire with the defenders of a mill in Yorkshire, and two Luddites died. Soon, Luddites there retaliated by killing a mill owner, who in the thick of the protests had supposedly boasted that he would ride up to his britches in Luddite blood. Three Luddites were hanged for the murder; other courts, often under political pressure, sent many more to the gallows or to exile in Australia before the last such disturbance, in 1816.
One technology the Luddites commonly attacked was the stocking frame, a knitting machine first developed more than 200 years earlier by an Englishman named William Lee. Right from the start, concern that it would displace traditional hand-knitters had led Queen Elizabeth I to deny Lee a patent. Lee’s invention, with gradual improvements, helped the textile industry grow—and created many new jobs. But labor disputes caused sporadic outbreaks of violent resistance. Episodes of machine-breaking occurred in Britain from the 1760s onward, and in France during the 1789 revolution.
As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”
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So if the Luddites weren’t attacking the technological foundations of industry, what made them so frightening to manufacturers? And what makes them so memorable even now? Credit on both counts goes largely to a phantom.
Ned Ludd, also known as Captain, General or even King Ludd, first turned up as part of a Nottingham protest in November 1811, and was soon on the move from one industrial center to the next. This elusive leader clearly inspired the protesters. And his apparent command of unseen armies, drilling by night, also spooked the forces of law and order. Government agents made finding him a consuming goal. In one case, a militiaman reported spotting the dreaded general with “a pike in his hand, like a serjeant’s halbert,” and a face that was a ghostly unnatural white.
In fact, no such person existed. Ludd was a fiction concocted from an incident that supposedly had taken place 22 years earlier in the city of Leicester. According to the story, a young apprentice named Ludd or Ludham was working at a stocking frame when a superior admonished him for knitting too loosely. Ordered to “square his needles,” the enraged apprentice instead grabbed a hammer and flattened the entire mechanism. The story eventually made its way to Nottingham, where protesters turned Ned Ludd into their symbolic leader.
The Luddites, as they soon became known, were dead serious about their protests. But they were also making fun, dispatching officious-sounding letters that began, “Whereas by the Charter”...and ended “Ned Lud’s Office, Sherwood Forest.” Invoking the sly banditry of Nottinghamshire’s own Robin Hood suited their sense of social justice. The taunting, world-turned-upside-down character of their protests also led them to march in women’s clothes as “General Ludd’s wives.”
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by JohnDearyMe » Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:01 am

Very interesting & informative elwaclaret, cheers.
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Duffer_ » Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:41 am

dsr wrote:
Wed Aug 17, 2022 10:39 pm
The debate in the House of Commons shortly afterwards suggests that the Georgian / Victorian era may have been slightly more nuanced than you suggest here. Maybe it wasn't so easy for the poor to have their say, but there were also rich men and parliamentarians who would have that say on their behalf.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1 ... onsChamber

Shaftesbury is only one example. Wilberforce. Gladstone. Dickens. Nightingale. Fry. Barnardo. Booth. Even Jeremy Bentham, who used to post regularly on here.

The vast reforms and improvements of the Victorian era didn't "just happen", they were worked for and fought for by the privileged classes (some of them) as well as by the working classes.
No doubt there were some good eggs amongst the priveleged classes who advanced the cause. But, just as Keir Hardie and George Lansbury were relatively progressive in the advancement of female emancipation, they are rightly not heralded as the heroes of women's suffrage.

Good things happened despite the establishment, not because of its inherent liberating tendencies.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:30 pm

Duffer_ wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:41 am
No doubt there were some good eggs amongst the priveleged classes who advanced the cause. But, just as Keir Hardie and George Lansbury were relatively progressive in the advancement of female emancipation, they are rightly not heralded as the heroes of women's suffrage.

Good things happened despite the establishment, not because of its inherent liberating tendencies.
Absolutely. It is a really really fascinating field, and at the moment one of the most productive for re-evaluation (the authorities left paper trails now buried in dusty archives). I enjoyed the Riots and Rebellions of the Victorian period so much, I a continuing my Victorian Studies and was delighted to be accepted for “19C Innovation and Experimentation” for my Masters Degree.
…Seems like this is to be my specialism… who’d have known, not me lol
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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by bfcjg » Thu Aug 18, 2022 1:15 pm

In the science and industry museum in Manchester there was some fantastic information regarding the massacre last time I was there. Really brought it home.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:10 pm

It does show just how relatively civilised a country the UK has been, that one of the big scandals of the age was the massacre of 15 people. Bearing in mind that the contemporary French were still suffering the rumblings of the revolution and reign of terror.

If we compare the UK in the early 1800's with other countries around the world at the same time, rather than with the UK of today, I think we stand up quite well.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 3:06 pm

dsr wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:10 pm
It does show just how relatively civilised a country the UK has been, that one of the big scandals of the age was the massacre of 15 people. Bearing in mind that the contemporary French were still suffering the rumblings of the revolution and reign of terror.

If we compare the UK in the early 1800's with other countries around the world at the same time, rather than with the UK of today, I think we stand up quite well.
Far from civilised at the time of the French Revolution (1798) or in all honesty through all three Republican revolutions: only when the Middle class hijacked the Revolution, leading to the Terror did British intellectuals turn their back on the prospect… many had to escape prosecution by fleeing, and was probably why we had Byron, and the Shelly’s travelling Europe… and the ghost stories that led directly to the writing of Frankenstein… a creation coving those rejected by ‘authority, in Frankenstein’s case his creator/father. Of course Robespierre has been vilified, but that is just another case of the winners writing the history. Interesting the three main emblems of the French Revolution are the red liberty bonnet, seen in the UK and America (especially), the cockerel - emblem of a return to the values of Celtic Gaul, and the “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité", penned by Robespierre and more expressive of the man than more or less anything history tells us he stood for.

We really didn’t stand up well, unless you have the right blood line… Every movement saw mass executions following the events… that tend not to show up in general histories, many many Lancastrians were executed, quietly behind prison walls.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Thu Aug 18, 2022 3:26 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 3:06 pm
Far from civilised at the time of the French Revolution (1798) or in all honesty through all three Republican revolutions: only when the Middle class hijacked the Revolution, leading to the Terror did British intellectuals turn their back on the prospect… many had to escape prosecution by fleeing, and was probably why we had Byron, and the Shelly’s travelling Europe… and the ghost stories that led directly to the writing of Frankenstein… a creation coving those rejected by ‘authority, in Frankenstein’s case his creator/father. Of course Robespierre has been vilified, but that is just another case of the winners writing the history. Interesting the three main emblems of the French Revolution are the red liberty bonnet, seen in the UK and America (especially), the cockerel - emblem of a return to the values of Celtic Gaul, and the “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité", penned by Robespierre and more expressive of the man than more or less anything history tells us he stood for.

We really didn’t stand up well, unless you have the right blood line… Every movement saw mass executions following the events… that tend not to show up in general histories, many many Lancastrians were executed, quietly behind prison walls.
A lot of the French revolutionaries have been vilified, not just Robespierre. I'm sure the death toll was a lot more than any equivalent UK death toll.

Robespierre may have written the words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, but (rather like the US constitution) those words were a lie. Those who disagreed with Robespierre were far to likely to get imprisonment, hatred, and death. (Though I suppose we're all equal in death, so that part's right.) There's no merit in saying liberty and freedom for all who agree with me and death to the rest; just as there is no merit in the US constitution saying all men are created equal (except black ones).

Surely Frankenstein was written for a bet, not as a polemic against authority? And the immediate cause of Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin leaving the country was because she was 16 and her father refused permission for her to shack up with a married man. They couldn't have had their sexual fun in this country. I think political considerations were secondary. (She didn't become Mary Shelley until immediately after the first Mrs. Shelley committed suicide.)

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 4:50 pm

dsr wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 3:26 pm
A lot of the French revolutionaries have been vilified, not just Robespierre. I'm sure the death toll was a lot more than any equivalent UK death toll.

Robespierre may have written the words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, but (rather like the US constitution) those words were a lie. Those who disagreed with Robespierre were far to likely to get imprisonment, hatred, and death. (Though I suppose we're all equal in death, so that part's right.) There's no merit in saying liberty and freedom for all who agree with me and death to the rest; just as there is no merit in the US constitution saying all men are created equal (except black ones).

Surely Frankenstein was written for a bet, not as a polemic against authority? And the immediate cause of Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin leaving the country was because she was 16 and her father refused permission for her to shack up with a married man. They couldn't have had their sexual fun in this country. I think political considerations were secondary. (She didn't become Mary Shelley until immediately after the first Mrs. Shelley committed suicide.)
Robespierre has been vilified as the route of the Terror, he wasn’t, he was trying to steer the committee, but fell foul of the radicals, who eventually did away with him. The first accounts are very enlightening. We then had the Second Republic and Finally The Napoleon takeover… all revised the history for their own ends. Mary Wilstoncraft (Mary Shelly’s mother) traveled extensively in France during the First Republic, and had no problem whatsoever as an English aristocrat. We tend to focus on the Storming of the Bastille… the prison contained just a couple of Reformers and was far from the bloodbath we re told in history books.

A lot of what we take from the French Revolution was penned by Dickens in ‘Tale of Two Cities’, there is no record of Dickens seeing it first hand… most of it was the result of the Revolutions takeover by the ‘right sort’ and came from the experiences of people like Wistonholme who were caught there when things turned ugly. Robespierre was the fall guy who opposed the radicalisation of the movement and paid for it with his head.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 5:00 pm

Sorry if I seem to be trying to undermine you dsr, not my intention… You just keep hitting my sweet spots: I did the French Revolution and also studied Dickens, and Shelly for my English Literature components of my degree.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by dsr » Thu Aug 18, 2022 5:22 pm

I don't feel undermined at all. And my sketchy views on the details about who did what and why in the French revolution aren't really relevant to my point, which was that the Peterloo massacre (bad though it was) was nothing like the scale of badness that the French achieved through their various republics, monarchies and empires in that era.

Which Shelley was your degree? Percy or Mary? And did their personal lives come into it?

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:34 pm

dsr wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 5:22 pm
I don't feel undermined at all. And my sketchy views on the details about who did what and why in the French revolution aren't really relevant to my point, which was that the Peterloo massacre (bad though it was) was nothing like the scale of badness that the French achieved through their various republics, monarchies and empires in that era.

Which Shelley was your degree? Percy or Mary? And did their personal lives come into it?
The point being the ‘right sort’ were what we’d now class as ‘middle class’ - lawyers and power grabbers mainly. It’s a complicated and fascinating field, I recommend it, highly.
Yes, we did cover personal lives: For all their talent both Percy and Lord Byron were very flawed characters in other ways… Percy and Byron were libertines… Percy ran off with Mary after getting her sister pregnant, Byron turned his back on his illegitimate child who died in poverty aged around 5 years, despite being one of the richest men in the world… again, really interesting and eye opening stuff. Percy wrote about Peterloo, but his work was banned and only appeared around thirty years later (sorry the name of the work escapes me).

Most of the British stuff was buried so deep we are still unravelling it, but I wouldn’t place a bet on the French Revolution costing more lives than British reform… I really wouldn’t.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by evensteadiereddie » Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:01 pm

The findings of the Peterloo Massacre public inquiry are expected to be published any time soon.... ;)

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:06 pm

evensteadiereddie wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:01 pm
The findings of the Peterloo Massacre public inquiry are expected to be published any time soon.... ;)
There are some very good historians still on the case. There was an enquiry… held on Deansgte. It was closed down when the truth threatened to get out. It was supposed to re-convene, we’re still waiting for it…

N.B. It is why the figures quoted are always 15-17 killed. They were the ones that can be proved beyond any doubt from testimony given at the time.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:16 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:06 pm
There are some very good historians still on the case. There was an enquiry… held on Deansgte. It was closed down when the truth threatened to get out. It was supposed to re-convene, we’re still waiting for it…

N.B. It is why the figures quoted are always 15-17 killed. They were the ones that can be proved beyond any doubt from testimony given at the time.
The reasons for the difference, 2 - one died of his injuries later (from Oldham) and the other was a child killed on Deansgate as the Yeoman charged through the town.. Towards St Peters Field

The true figure, is unkown but experts ‘estimate’ (when they can be drawn, and occasionally published) 150-500 died that day, for daring to demand some rights. This in a town where the Magistrates acted like Gods with the P.M. SIdmouth and The Prince Regent backing them every step.

It is also believed the post Reform meeting roundup was a similar 150-500 charged with sedition, again many were hung. It would have been more but The Times had someone on the hoardings, and got the report in the late edition, before Sidmouth got his reports, from the magistrates. It is why the few questions about it were asked… and hence the public enquiry, that they quietly closed down… this is also the reason Peterloo never went away… The Times beat the official Government response.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Dazzler » Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:29 pm

I watched this again the other night. Enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

The Peterloo Massacre Inquest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYK_1xH8wU
This user liked this post: elwaclaret

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by evensteadiereddie » Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:40 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:16 pm
The reasons for the difference, 2 - one died of his injuries later (from Oldham) and the other was a child killed on Deansgate as the Yeoman charged through the town.. Towards St Peters Field

The true figure, is unkown but experts regularly ‘estimate’ 150-500 died that day, for daring to demand some rights. This in a town where the Magistrates acted like Gods with the P.M. SIdmouth and The Prince Regent backing them every step.

It is also believed the post Reform meeting roundup was a similar 150-500 charged with sedition, again many were hung. It would have been more but The Times had someone on the hoardings, and got the report in the late edition, before Sidmouth got his reports, from the magistrates. It is why the few questions about it were asked… and hence the public enquiry, that they quietly closed down… this is also the reason Peterloo never went away… The Times beat the official Government response.


Nothing changes, does it?

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:40 pm

evensteadiereddie wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:40 pm
Nothing changes, does it?
You can say that, I couldn’t possibly comment.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:44 pm

Dazzler wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:29 pm
I watched this again the other night. Enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

The Peterloo Massacre Inquest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYK_1xH8wU
Absolute masterpiece! It should be a staple of education. It is written DIRECTLY from the inquest transcripts… word for word.
That is not drama… that is THE inquest, you are hearing.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:52 pm

Dazzler wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:29 pm
I watched this again the other night. Enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

The Peterloo Massacre Inquest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYK_1xH8wU
Another I utterly recommend is this…
https://youtu.be/2eQkUuVW2wU

Robert Poole was my Prof for the module on Riots and Rebellions (and Peterloo, expert). Top top Chap and a lovely man. I could sit, listen and question him all day!

The animation takes some getting used to though… should have been far better (but that is easy for me to say).

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by Dazzler » Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:21 pm

elwaclaret wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 8:52 pm
Another I utterly recommend is this…
https://youtu.be/2eQkUuVW2wU

Robert Poole was my Prof for the module on Riots and Rebellions (and Peterloo, expert). Top top Chap and a lovely man. I could sit, listen and question him all day!

The animation takes some getting used to though… should have been far better (but that is easy for me to say).
I'll defo watch that very shortly.

Just on that inquest, there are a few familiar faces but the only one I can name is Dave Hill. I'm wondering if your good self or anyone else can name any others.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Thu Aug 18, 2022 11:09 pm

Dazzler wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:21 pm
I'll defo watch that very shortly.

Just on that inquest, there are a few familiar faces but the only one I can name is Dave Hill. I'm wondering if your good self or anyone else can name any others.
Not entirely sure there was every a cast list as there was no fees, all the actors more or less arrived on the day and were assigned roles, if I recall the conversation I had with PRP about it. They had to turn actors away so many wanted to be part of the first record of the inquest outside of the archives.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Fri Aug 19, 2022 11:44 am

Just watching the PRP link again, and the figure he quotes is 18 - this is the latest confirmed figure, I was forgetting that another Has now been officially added to the list on the memorial, but is yet to realy show up in academic sources (due to the length of around seven years, it takes to get academic history books through the vetting process -

Books have to go through a whole series of tests and examinations by the authors historical peers before a final quorum of top historians test the author in a trial like question and answer session, (many fail at this stage and are rejected, they can still appear as general histories by this point, but are not academically accredited) before publication and addition to reading lists.

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Re: Peterloo Anniversary today

Post by elwaclaret » Fri Aug 19, 2022 12:45 pm

Nice article that appeared on the anniversary in 2012 by the Guardian for those wanting more info:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-nort ... manchester

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