William Edward Armytage Axon

A rowdy but good-humoured crowd gathered in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to protest against electoral malpractice and Government cronyism.

As the Nineteenth Century opened, workers in England’s rapidly growing industrial centres were driving national prosperity. But they had few MPs to represent them, electoral malpractice was rife and most of them were not allowed to vote anyway. The feeling that Government was a hostile enemy from whom neither justice nor sympathy could be expected was only confirmed in August 1819.

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