Introduction
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.
THE 16th of August [1819] is memorable in the annals of Manchester for the fatal Peterloo.* Soon after nine o’clock the open space of St Peter’s Fields began to fill, and processions of the Reformers from all parts of the town and the surrounding districts marched in with banners and flags. A hustings had been erected on a site near where the south-east corner of the Free Trade Hall now stands.* There were about sixty thousand present, including many women and children. At the last moment the magistrates decided to arrest Mr Henry Hunt and those acting with him in the conduct of the meeting.* Many special constables had been sworn, and near the field were stationed six troops of the 15th Hussars, a troop of horse artillery with two guns, the greater part of the 31st Infantry, some companies of the 88th regiment, the Cheshire Yeomanry, over 300 strong, and about forty of the Manchester Yeomanry.
As Hunt began to speak, the Manchester Yeomanry, hot-headed young men who were more or less intoxicated, drew their swords, and dashed into the crowd which they attacked recklessly. They were soon completely hemmed round by the mass of human beings against whom they had thrown themselves.
* Peterloo is not a place name, but a portmanteau word blending St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, where these infamous events fell out, with Waterloo in Belgium, where the Duke of Wellington masterminded the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. See The Battle of Waterloo. The ‘Peterloo’ tag was sardonic, a rebuke to the Government for the use of troops on a peaceful if rowdy protest. Contrast the way that Charles Napier dealt with another and much more dangerous rally in Manchester twenty years later, in A Real Soldier.
* The land came into the possession of William Cobden MP, the man who led the campaign to repeal the Corn Laws (1846) and promote international peace through free trade and markets. For a generation, he personified opposition to Marxism — “in short” wrote journalist Francis Hirst in 1941 “whether we are to be ruled as slaves by the bureaucracy of a Police State or as free men by our chosen representatives”. Cobden made the site available for the Free Trade Hall, constructed in 1853-56, and in 1863 it became the venue for a historic meeting in which cotton workers pledged support to Abraham Lincoln and the Union at the height of the American Civil War. See A Letter to the President.
* Henry Hunt (1773-1835) was a larger-than-life campaigner for Parliamentary and industrial reform. In 1830, he was elected MP for Preston and used his position to introduce a bill for women’s suffrage, which was laughed out of the chamber. He remained committed all his life to universal suffrage and an end to child labour. Hunt respected the law and never countenanced revolution, but he enjoyed giving rabble-rousing speeches and this together with an abrasive manner cost him widespread support in later years.
Précis
In 1819, a crowd of some 50,000 gathered in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to hear leading campaigners speak on Parliamentary reform. Quite unexpectedly, the authorities moved to arrest the organiser, Henry Hunt, and as he took the podium a detachment of the Manchester Yeomanry, on peacekeeping duty, saw fit to draw their weapons and rush the crowd. (57 / 60 words)
In 1819, a crowd of some 50,000 gathered in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to hear leading campaigners speak on Parliamentary reform. Quite unexpectedly, the authorities moved to arrest the organiser, Henry Hunt, and as he took the podium a detachment of the Manchester Yeomanry, on peacekeeping duty, saw fit to draw their weapons and rush the crowd.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: may, must, not, otherwise, since, unless, whether, who.
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