The Offending Arch

One evening during the winter of 1938-39 Edwin C. Guillet, a noted Canadian historian, received a strange telephone call. It was from the Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King. Mr. King was upset. In fact, his agitation bordered on anger. He had pondered the problem for several months and felt he needed to share it with someone. Who better than with his historian friend, Guillet.  The Prime Minister explained that the previous summer he had participated in an event of historic importance to the country and of particular personal pleasure and pride to himself. He had unveiled an arch - the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch at Niagara Falls.

The memorial arch was the brainchild of T. B. McQuesten, Chairman of the Niagara Parks Commission. It was to commemorate the inception of responsible government following the rebellion of 1837. He had an architect prepare the design, which bore the Egyptian motif with a tapered top. The cement core had been cast and was awaiting the application of limestone panels which were to contain various bas relief drawings and inscriptions commemorating the rebellion and, in particular, the person of William Lyon Mackenzie.

By April 1938 construction had progressed to the point where a date could be set for the unveiling of the monument and two dates in June were suggested to King. While the Prime Minister was normally hesitant about accepting out-of-town engagements, King leapt at the chance to officiate on this occasion. ‘I need hardly say that I am more than appreciative of the invitation thus extended, and feel much honoured by it as well. In all probability our Parliament will prorogue sometime between the middle and end of June. Ordinarily I would feel that for this reason, I should not make any engagements for that fortnight, as my presence in the concluding days of the Session is more imperative than at any other time. However, I should not wish to miss an association with the unveiling of the Memorial Arch, and the invitation extended by Mr. McQuestion and Members of the Board to me to unveil the Memorial Arch causes me to feel that I might well be justified in being absent for at least the Saturday on which the ceremony is to take place.’ In his diary King noted, ‘accepted today an invitation to unveil the memorial arch at Niagara last weekend in June - a significant fulfilment of God’s Holy will.’

It was announced that the completed arch was meant to serve a dual purpose. First, the Arch was intended to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of responsible government in Canada by honouring ‘the constancy, courage, faith and right thinking of the humble and unremembered folk’ who had pioneered and settled the country and to remind the present generation of the pride they should have in their nation’s history. Secondly, the Arch was constructed to provide an impressive entrance to Queen Victoria Park for visitors entering Canada over the Upper Steel Arch Bridge which was known locally as the Falls View Bridge.’

However, nature nullified the latter purpose, for on Thursday, January 27th, 1938 a massive movement of ice down the river unceremoniously relocated the bridge’s abutments, necessitating the replacement of the Falls View Bridge. The new structure named the Rainbow Bridge was eventually constructed some distance north of the both the old bridge and the Arch.

The site of Mr. King’s dedication ceremonies was Oakes Garden Theatre, which had been formally opened itself the previous September when the adjoining River Road had also been widened. The unveiling of the Arch was meant to mark the completion of the beautification of an area which had been designated by an act of the Legislature in 1885 ‘for the preservation of the Niagara scenery about the Niagara Falls.’ The Prime Minister declared that without a doubt this location where beauty and history were perfectly combined, was the most beautiful spot in the world. On Saturday, June 18th, seven thousand citizens looked on in anxious anticipation as the Prime Minister rose to unveil the Arch, which for the occasion was covered in red, white and blue bunting. Mr. King stepped forward and pushed a small electric switch. Dramatically the bunting fell away disclosing the Memorial Arch. Mackenzie King, who it must be admitted reluctantly, was more famous for dull than for daring speeches was said to have outdone himself at the event. According to a newspaper report of the unveiling, King delivered to the assembled throng an ‘inspiring message.’  The Arch, King said, was more than a memorial to ‘a few rebels,’ for the rebellion was ‘a mere incident in the history of Canada.’ Rather ‘the Arch was a symbol of triumph’ epitomizing ‘the conquest of ideas and ideals. As I look at the Arch, it seems to me one can see the great pilgrimage of men and women going back three centuries who have left us the country we have today.’

Facing the Falls on the south side of the Arch above the opening of the Arch, verse three of the 93rd Psalm was inscribed: ‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice.’ The reference, of course, was to the nearby cascading waters thundering in the background. Inside the Arch there were various sculptural panels, each depicting scenes from the history of Canada. Father Hennepin was there, along with Lasalle and his 45-ton, 5-gun barque, the Griffin. Native people were there, too, described by the Prime Minister as ‘primitive sons for whom we have not done full justice.’ The Prime Minister’s grandfather - the Little Rebel, William Lyon Mackenzie - was there too, depicted presenting his 7th Report to the House of Assembly. There was a War of 1812 panel on which a soldier, a Native warrior, and an armed seaman were portrayed, along with Sir James Yeo’s flagship, the St. Lawrence. Included also was a pioneer with a gun - perhaps he was a rebel - along with a settler’s family in an ox-cart travelling along a corduroy road.

Below the panels was this inscription:

‘This Memorial was erected to honour the memory of the men and women in this land throughout their generations, who braved the wilderness, maintained the settlements, performed the common tasks, without praise or glory and were the pioneers of political freedom and a system of responsible government which became the cornerstone of the British Commonwealth of Nations.’ 

As the Prime Minister scrutinized the panels, his critical eye was attracted to something to which he took immediate exception. It is not known whether he brought his concerns to the attention of the Commission Chairman, but it is known that he fretted about the matter for many months before deciding to voice his concerns to Guillet.  On one of the panels thirty-two names had been inscribed. There were the names of men who had been executed following the rebellion of 1837. The list included Samuel Lount, Peter Matthews, and Joshua Gilliam Doan, who, it was said, ‘sprang into eternity without a struggle’ when the trap-door was sprung. King’s consternation was caused by the presence on the panels of American interlopers, for among the list of revered Canadian Patriots, King’s critical eye caught the names of several Americans, men who were members of an organization called The Brotherhood of Hunters. This semi-secret sect, which was spawned during the days of the Rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada, was comprised largely of opportunistic Yankees who said they’d help then hijacked the Patriot cause. They attempted to turn a local fight for greater freedom into a rerun of their own revolution. Mackenzie King said these Americans had no more right to be on the panels with our patriots than members of the Brotherhood of Fenians, a group of disgruntled Irish-Americans who had also sought to free Canadians from the dark tyranny of British oppression. They, too, had invaded Canada and were likewise driven back across the border. The Brotherhood of Hunters, a semi-military society of mystic oaths, secret signs and offices of rank was committed to the conquest of Canada. Leaders of the organization had even held a convention in Cleveland in September, 1838 and in anticipation of their successful assaults on the British colony had set up a constitution for the ‘Republic of Upper Canada.’

The Brotherhood quickly transformed itself from a source of assistance into a cause for concern. Its members became motivated by dreams of manifest destiny, based, said one historian, on their sole political doctrine: ‘We own the continent.’ Later the national dreams of many of the Hunters degenerated into nothing more than hunger for frontier land, profit and power. Thoughts of liberty gave way to lust for loot as more and more of the ruffian raiders crossed the porous border intent only on making money. Their isolated incursions into Canada became simply furtive acts of criminality.  Little wonder that Mackenzie King and historian Guillet strongly objected to the presence on the panels of the names of American raiders. Their inclusion detracted completely from the noble nature of the Canadian rebellions, and the ultimate accomplishments of the Canadian patriots. Guillet readily agreed to support the Prime Minister’s objections and he later criticized their presence publicly in an article in a national magazine. It was all to no avail, however, for as Guillet subsequently bemoaned, ‘the inscription has not been altered.’

In Fact, nothing was done until some twenty-eight years later during, ironically, Canada’s Centennial Year, when a decision was made which resolved the problem. The drastic solution resulted in the baby being thrown out with the bath water, for away went the offending names, but away, too, went the Arch. The whole structure was destroyed. The Commission explained that because of the increasing growth of traffic on River Road, the offending Arch had become more hazardous than historic. Traffic was being obstructed and it had to go.  After most of the tourists had left town sometime during the latter part of 1967-68, the Arch was demolished. Pieces of it were scattered far and wide, the medallions containing the vessels the Griffin and the St. Lawrence ending up aground on the corner of Front and Jarvis Streets in Toronto. It is not known what happened to the rest. The Prime Minister’s conundrum was finally resolved. But at what cost? There are some who believe that Mackenzie King might have had real reservations about razing the Arch. His solution? Demolition if necessary, but not necessarily demolition.

Remembering Rebellion

The problematic nature of public monuments to the rebellions in Upper Canada can be seen in the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch at Niagara Falls that commemorated the inception of responsible government following the rebellion of 1837.  The memorial arch was the idea of Thomas Baker McQuesten, Minister of Highways and Public Works in Mitchell Hepburn’s Ontario government during the 1930s and part of an elaborate and expensive scheme to develop the Canadian side of the Niagara River. Historic reconstructions, formal gardens, a memorial arch and an open-air theatre were built along a thirty mile scenic parkway that overlooked the gorge carved by the powerful falls. The gardens, arch and theatre were designed in the ‘Canadian Style’ of architecture, promoted by a group of Toronto-based architects and landscape architects between the two world wars.  McQuesten’s view of Canada focused on the predominantly British heritage of southern Ontario but even more specifically on the interaction of America and Canada along the international border.  Indeed, all his restored or memorialised sites dealt with armed confrontation between Americans and British or Canadian soldiers.

The completed arch was meant to serve a dual purpose. First, it was intended to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of responsible government in Canada by honouring those who had pioneered and settled the country and to remind the present generation of the pride they should have in their nation’s history. It highlighted the ethnic roots of Canada from its French origins, the immigration of Loyalists from the United States after the American Revolution and the multi-ethnic defence of the colony during the War of 1812.  Secondly, the Arch was built to provide an impressive entrance to Queen Victoria Park for visitors entering Canada over the Upper Steel Arch Bridge which was known locally as the Falls View Bridge.   Tourism, both Canadian and American, would help to invigorate the otherwise stagnant Depression economy, but McQuesten was also motivated by his desire to promote Canada as a civilised, cultured nation abroad. Americans could cross the border at Niagara over the Upper Steel Arch Bridge until it collapsed in 1938 and was replaced by the Rainbow Bridge that was constructed some distance north of the both the old bridge and the Arch. The architect William Lyon Somerville prepared the design that had an Egyptian motif with a tapered top. The arch contained four large narrative relief panels designed by C.W. Jefferys, an artist known for his illustrations of Canadian history and were carved by the accomplished sculptor Emanuel Hahn.  

The earliest event commemorated was the discovery of the Falls in 1679 by Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Pére Louis Hennepin. This panel was on the west side of the arch below a medallion of La Salle’s ship, the Griffin. A second panel, on one side of the inside of the arch, commemorated the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution. A weary mother holding a baby rides in a cart full of the family’s possessions and pulled by the family’s pair of oxen. The father, anxiously gripping his rifle, and the two sons, armed with pike and axe, vigilantly escort the cart through hostile American territory. The third panel celebrated the War of 1812 highlighting the British, Canadian and Indian (something McQuesten thought had been neglected) heritage of the colony.  A British soldier stood with a musket across his chest while an Indian (we know from McQuesten’s correspondence that it is Tecumseh) waited in anticipation, his rifle at the ready. A Canadian farmer militiaman brought up the rear with his pistol drawn.  A relief medallion, matching that of the Griffin, was located above the War of 1812 panel and showed the St. Lawrence, the flagship of the British naval forces and the largest vessel sailing the Great Lakes at the time. The fourth panel remembered William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion of 1837.  Facing the Falls on the south side of the Arch above the opening of the Arch, verse three of the 93^rd Psalm was inscribed: ‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice’, referring to the surging waters thundering in the background.  Below the panels was an inscription:

This Memorial was erected to honour the memory of the men and women in this land throughout their generations, who braved the wilderness, maintained the settlements, performed the common tasks, without praise or glory and were the pioneers of political freedom and a system of responsible government which became the cornerstone of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

McQuesten’s depiction of Canadian history was not simply an opposition of the British against the Americans with twentieth-century Canada as a product. His was a decidedly Whig version. One of the recurring themes in the reconstructions and commemorative plaques is the Rebellion of 1837. Mackenzie’s stone house at Queenston, where he began publication of his controversial Colonial Advocate, was restored in 1936 by Somerville for McQuesten and the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch was dedicated to those who died in the Rebellion, alleged victims of the fight for ‘responsible government’. The panel on the arch depicting Mackenzie shows him delivering his Seventh Report, in which he outlined to the Upper Canada House of Assembly the grievances Canadians had experienced under the ‘Family Compact.’ In all, thirty-two men, primarily labourers and farmers, were hanged by the two colonial governments in 1838 and 1839. The names of these men were inscribed below the Mackenzie panel on the memorial arch between two medallions carved with profiles of the Toronto ‘martyrs’ of the Rebellion, Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews.

In January 1937 McQuesten discussed the design with Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Little Rebel’s grandson. King’s diary shows the extent to which he was aware of the rebellions.  There are many references to it and his grandfather dating from 1914 to 1950.  King was asked to recommend suitable Biblical inscriptions, and in a lengthy letter suggested over a dozen. King cautioned McQuesten about over-emphasising the rebellion noting in his diary on 13 January 1938. ‘I question in my mind the wisdom of associating responsible government too closely with the incident of the rebellion, since the real struggle had been going on years before...’  The Prime Minister also suggested including along with the names of rebels who had been killed in battle or executed, the names of those whose ‘lives were lost upholding the Crown. They too were doing their duty as they believed it should be done, in support of King and country.’ McQuesten used some of King’s suggestions, but stuck largely to his original plans.  By April 1938, construction had reached the point when a date could be set for the unveiling of the monument and two dates in June were suggested to King.   Like McQuesten, King was passionate about landscape gardening and history, particularly his own. In his diary on 22 April he noted, ‘accepted today an invitation to unveil the memorial arch at Niagara last weekend in June, a significant fulfilment of God’s Holy will.’

The dedication ceremonies took place in the Oakes Garden Theatre that had been formally opened the previous September. King noted in his diary that on Saturday, 18 June 1938, seven thousand citizens looked on as he rose to unveil the Arch covered in red, white and blue bunting that fell away after King pushed a small electric switch. King was not a great orator but, on this occasion, he delivered to the assembled throng an ‘inspiring message.’  The Evening Telegram reported that King said that he Arch was more than a memorial to ‘a few rebels,’ for the rebellion was ‘a mere incident in the history of Canada.’ Rather ‘the Arch was a symbol of triumph’ epitomising ‘the conquest of ideas and ideals. As I look at the Arch, it seems to me one can see the great pilgrimage of men and women going back three centuries who have left us the country we have today.’

As the Prime Minister carefully scrutinised the panels, his eye was attracted to something to which he took immediate exception.  Whether he expressed his concerns to the Commission Chairman is not known, but he considered the matter for many months before deciding to talk to the historian Edwin Guillet during the winter of 1938-1939.  On one of the panels were thirty-two names of men who had been executed following the rebellions in 1837 and 1838. The list included Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews hanged in April 1838 for their part in his grandfather’s rebellion the previous December but King’s disquiet was caused by the presence on the panels of the names of several American border raiders. King believed these members of the Hunter organisation had attempted to turn a local rebellion into a replay of their own revolution.  While the rebellion in December 1837 had been a wholly Canadian affair, the shambolic border raids in 1838 in support of Canadian exiles were largely American.  Their invasion, much as during the War of 1812, has been repulsed.  For King, their actions were criminal not patriotic.  It is not surprising that he and Edwin Guillet strongly objected to their presence on the panels arguing that their inclusion detracted completely from the noble purpose of the Canadian rebellions. Guillet readily agreed to support the Prime Minister’s objections and he later publicly criticised their presence. However, as Guillet subsequently complained, ‘the inscription has not been altered.’  Nothing was done until twenty-eight years later during Canada’s Centennial Year, when a decision was made to demolish the arch during the latter part of 1967.  The increasing growth of cars on River Road meant that the Arch was obstructing traffic and had become more hazardous than historical.

Further Reading

Knowles, Norman, J., Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts, (Toronto University Press), 1997, Frank, Mark, The Mackenzie Panels, The Strange Case of Niagara’s Fallen Arch, (Red Robin Press), 1987, For the most comprehensive study of the ‘Canadian Style’ see Hunt, Geoffrey and Lyle, John M., Toward a Canadian Architecture, (Agnes Etherington Art Centre), 1982, pp. 42-60.  National Archives of Canada, MG26-J13, King, William Lyon Mackenzie, Diary, available on http://king.collectionscanada.ca/EN/default.asp

Three Rebellions: Foreword

 

This Foreword was written by John Rule in mid-2009 and was included in the first edition but I decided not to use it in the second edition that came out in 2017.  It seemed less appropriate then as John had unfortunately died in the interim.  Re-reading it recently, I decided to include in on my blogs in part as a tribute to a historian of rare ability and also because it seemed more relevent to me at the end of 2020 than it had three years earlier.

'Three Rebellions Canada 1837-1836, South Wales 1839 and Australia 1854 is indeed an ambitious study telling its story in around a thousand pages of description and analysis supported throughout with illustrations and maps. It would take a determined reader to read and digest a work of such substance from cover to cover, although one hopes many will do so. The book has, however been constructed in ways that support different approaches to its reading by treating each rebellion separately but with a consistent division into chapters and headed paragraphs within them linked to a front-placed twelve-page table of contents and detailed index.  The three rebellions have been well chosen. All were in different ways a consequence of British imperial rule, although the nature of that rule was obviously felt in different ways and through different forms of pressure. The outcome of these challenges to British imperial authority was in each case defeat. That is why they were ‘rebellions’. Had these armed direct actions achieved significant constitutional change in their own time, then history would have come to record them as ‘revolutions. To echo a famous phrase of E. P. Thompson, the rebels if failing in their own time ‘still need rescuing from the enormous condescension of posterity’.

            There is at least a measure of irony in noting that progress to democratic constitutional government was to be more rapid in Canada and Australia than in Britain. In all three cases of rebellion, sections of the local working class - iron workers and coalminers in Newport; agricultural and related workers in the two Canadas, and gold diggers at the Ballarat confrontation in Victoria - were the main source of support.  All three rebellions had local economic grievances, some of which like the campaign against Chinese immigrants to the goldfields were hardly progressive.  Violence was present to a degree in each case, both by the rebels and delivered in the form of reactive repression by the authorities.  At Ballarat in 1854 of 150 diggers who refused to surrender their defence of the now celebrated Eureka Stockade, twenty-five were killed and thirty wounded by the charging troops of whose own number four were killed and eleven wounded.

            All this seems rather negative, Brown however is eager to stress the positive contributions made by the rebellions. Reform was advanced by what can be viewed as a ‘Peterloo effect’ by analogy with the Manchester reform meeting in 1819 at which cavalry troops charged the reformers.  Like the Peterloo massacre, later reformers celebrated these three rebellions, so dramatic that it could not be forgotten by reformers or authority.  An Australian poet later celebrated the heroism at the Eureka Stockade as among the most significant moments for the subsequent achievement of radical democracy in Australia:

 

Yet ere the year was over,

Freedom rolled in like a flood:

They gave us all we asked for

When we asked for it in blood.

      What was being asked for?  As Richard Brown argues essentially it was the kind of state and constitution sought by the Chartists. At a mass meeting of 10,000 gold miners a Reform League was established and pledged to agitate for a fair and just representation; manhood suffrage; no property qualification for the legislative councils; payment of members; and short duration of parliament.. These demands were of course those of the Charter for which John Frost had led his Welsh rebels at Newport fifteen years before.

            During several decades of leading the subject’s teaching Richard Brown found the time and energy to produce around fifty writings and broadcasts over a wide range of historical subjects.  Many of these contributions are concerned with the teaching of history as an Advanced Level subject; others are textbooks including, for example, a two volume history published in 1991, Economy and Society in Modern Britain 1700-1850 and Church and State in Modern Britain 1700-1850. This was followed by more specialist works on radicalism, revolution and reform and in 1998 on Chartism. He tells us that this last subject became his special interest as a teacher and as a scholar. It is not then surprising that it was to an ambitious project involving the great nineteenth-century working-class movement that he has dedicated the time bestowed by his recent retirement. Richard Brown has written a well documented, thoroughly argued and especially interesting book.'

 

Interview on first edition of my Three Rebellions

Interview with Mark Crail 

This interview was originally published on the Chartist Ancestor blog but, although it is referred to on the revised website, there is no direct link to it.

Mark Crail: Three Rebellions is a monumental work of over 1,100 pages. What inspired you to write it – and how long did it eventually take?

Richard Brown: The inspiration for the book came from a comment made by a sixth form student in 2004 who asked, I think to get me off the subject of the Plug Plugs, ‘I don’t suppose Chartism was exported was it?’  It was one of those off the cuff comments that gets you thinking.  In truth, I didn’t really know the answer but remember saying that as many people emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the 1840s and 1850s, they would have taken their beliefs with them and that presumably Chartist principles would have been part of their intellectual baggage.  What began as an off-hand remark led me to spend the next four years exploring the question.  I found that, although there was a widely held assumption that Chartism had played a role in the democratising of the Australian colonies, little had been written on the subject from a global perspective.  It was this that led me to explore the issue of rebellion in the colonies to see how far Chartist ideas contributed to the development of colonial reformist and radical thinking.   I did much of the research, drafting ideas and working out the structure for the book in my final two years of teaching when I was increasingly relieved of worrying about the next educational initiative.  Once I retired I was able to focus on the writing that took about eighteen months. 

Mark Crail: Your book deals with events that took place on three separate continents and spread over a period of nearly two decades. What is the common theme or central argument that makes sense of bringing them together in a single book?

Richard Brown: The reasons why I chose to consider three rebellions in different parts of the British Empire fall into two categories.  First, in each of three areas there were tensions between the colonial authorities and the ways in which they wished to govern and reformers who sought a greater say in the ways in which they were governed.  Secondly, it was the abject failure by the authorities to recognise the depth of anger on the part of reformers and its unwillingness to introduce some form of responsible government that led to rebellion.  Violence was born of frustrated dreams turning individuals such as Papineau, Mackenzie, Lalor and John Frost from supporters, even if critical, of the existing system of government into increasingly radical individuals who concluded that ending the existing despotism of the colonial state, if necessary by direct action, was justifiable.  It is this which is central to the book and brings together South Wales, the Canadas and Australia into a common political and constitutional context.  Once I had decided this, then the structure of the remainder of the book fell into place.  Before explaining the causes of the rebellions, they needed to be placed within a chronological context.  After the rebellions had failed, their aftermaths, links and how they were and are remembered needed to be considered.  Finally, I wanted to place the rebellions within some sort of overall framework and this forms the basis of the final chapter.

Mark Crail:  Is this a book aimed squarely at specialist historians, or is it accessible to a wider readership? What would you hope non-specialists would take away from reading it?

Richard Brown: As I see myself as a teacher as well as a historian, I would hope that my book will appeal to both specialist historians and to a more popular readership.  I’ve always believed that a good story is the best way to engage people with the past and this is a great story.  It has its heroes and villains and its martyrs to the cause.  It raises questions about ‘what if the rebellions had succeeded?’  It is also about how people remember the past and how the past is constructed and reconstructed across time.  The events happened but the ways in which we see them today is very different to how they were regarded by contemporaries.    Through reading the book I would hope that non-specialist readers would know about rebellions in Canada and Australia as well as in Newport and that they would recognise that though the rebellions ended in failure they played a critical role in the development of the democratic systems of government that we have today and that people were then as now prepared to stand up and fight for the democratic principles in which they believed against the heavy-handed dictats of the state.

Mark Crail: In closing the book you talk about the tension between heritage and history and to the later interpretations we put on Chartism (and the Canada and Ballarat rebellions), what part do you think the growth of interest in family history has played in that?

Richard Brown: There is no doubt that the growth of interest in family history, especially through the Internet, has played a seminal role in the burgeoning development of interest in and understanding of people’s heritage.  I remember talking to a history lecturer who saw this as a ‘dumbing down’ of his subject and that the heritage of the past was history itself.  Though his second point may be debatable, his view of ‘dumbing down’ missed the point big time.  The study of history has always had its populist dimension and family history is part of this search for understanding where we are now by seeking to understand where we’ve come from.  It was for that reason that I included the chapter on remembrance in the book.  If history is simply what happened without considering how what happened impacts on us today and how our view of events changes, then it is simply a good story but little more.  The key to the development of the subject is establishing the connections between the past and the present, not in a pedagogical sense of learning lessons, but as an essential part of understanding what humanity is and was.

Mark Crail: Finally, as a history teacher, you will doubtless have ended up covering everything from the Romans to the fall of the Berlin Wall. What brings you back time after time to Chartism? Have your students been particularly drawn to the period – or is it just we obsessives?

Richard Brown: My interest in Chartism and those who supported the Charter comes from two sources.  First, I was brought up as a Liberal radical in a family with a long tradition of political activity.  My father had fought, as a teenager in the Spanish Civil War and then against Hitler from 1939 though to 1946 (he always said his war did not end until he had finished the process of denazification in Germany).  His mother, my paternal grandmother came from a very political family.  Her sister was a suffragette; her brother a trade union official.  As I was growing up, I was told stories (fascinating to an eight year old, though rarely fully accurate) about the emergence of the labour movement and of the need to fight injustice wherever and whatever it was.  My own political apprenticeship was served in the student protests against Vietnam in the mid-60s and continued during the next four years at university.  Then teaching rather than politics, a decision I never regretted.  Secondly, I was brought up in a village where there had been major riots in 1816 after which my great-great-great-great uncle had been hanged for sedition.  Weaned on the tales of his sacrifice (in fact it appears he was in the wrong place at the wrong time), I turned both to history and to the question of what motivated people to act in the ways they did.  Was it need, greed or circumstance?  How far were people driven by ideals and principles or was pragmatism the key to understanding people’s experiences? Studying Chartism ticked all the right boxes for me...and if that’s obsessive, then and I’m certain my students would agree, I’m a dyed in the wool obsessive!

Looking at History: My Books and other publications

Looking at History: My Books and other publications: Those publications with an asterisk (*) were co-written with C.W. Daniels. This list does not include editorials for Teaching History, book reviews or unpublished papers. Neither does it include the two series of books for which I have been joint-editor: Cambridge Topics in History and Cambridge Perspectives in History. Including these books would increase the length of this appendix by 52 books.

1974-1979

Computer-based data and social and economic history (for the Local History Classroom Project), (1974).

Social and Economic History and the Computer (for LHCP), (1975).

‘Local and National History -- an interrelated response’, in Suffolk History Forum, 1977.

‘Our Future Local Historians’, in The Local Historian, Vol. 13, 1978. *

‘Sixth Form History’, in Teaching History, May 1976. *

‘Sixth Form History’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 3 June 1977. *

‘The new history -- an essential reappraisal’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 2 December 1977. *

‘Interrelated Issues’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 1 December 1978. *

‘The Myth Exposed’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 30 November 1979 * also reprinted in John Fines (ed.) see below.

1980-1984

Nineteenth Century Britain, (Macmillan), 1980. *

‘The Local History Classroom Project’, in Developments in History Teaching, (University of Exeter), 1980. *

‘A Chronic Hysteresis’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 5 December 1980. *

Twentieth Century Europe, (Macmillan), 1981. *

‘Is there still room for History in the secondary curriculum?’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 5 December 1981. *

‘Content considered’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 9 April 1982. *

Twentieth Century Britain, (Macmillan), 1982. *

‘A Level History’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 8 April 1983. *

‘History in danger revisited’, in The Times Educational Supplement,  9 December 1983. *

‘History and study skills’, in John Fines (ed.), Teaching History, (Holmes McDougall), 1983. 

‘History and study skills’, reprinted in School and College, Vol. 4, (4), 1983.

Four scripts for Sussex Tapes, 1983:

People, Land and Trade 1830-1914.

Pre-eminence and Competition 1830-1914.

The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution.

Lloyd George to Beveridge 1906-1950.

Four computer programs for Sussex Tapes, 1984:

The Industrial Revolution.

Population, Medicine and Agriculture.

Transport: road, canal and railway.

Social Impact of Change.

‘It’s time History Teachers were offensive’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 28 November 1984. *

The Chartists, (Macmillan), 1984. *

1985-1989

‘Using documents with sixth formers’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 29 November 1985. *

Learning History: A Guide to Advanced Study, (Macmillan), 1986. *

GCSE History, (The Historical Association), 1986, revised edition, 1987, as editor and contributor.

‘Training or Survival?’ with M. Booth and G. Shawyer in The Times Educational Supplement, 10 April 1987.

Change and Continuity in British Society 1800-1850, (Cambridge Topics in History, Cambridge University Press), 1987.

‘There are always alternatives: Britain during the Depression’ for BBC Radio, 14 September 1987.

‘Cultural imperialism’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 4 December, 1987.

‘The Training of History Teachers Project’, in Teaching History, 50, January 1988.

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC,) 1988.

‘The Development of Children’s Historical Thinking’ with G. Shawyer and M. Booth, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 18, (2), 1988.

‘The New Demonology’, Teaching History, Vol. 53, October 1988.

The Future of the Past: History in the Curriculum 5-16: A Personal Overview, (The Historical Association), 1988.

‘History Study Skills: Working with Sources’, History Sixth, Vol. 3, October 1988. *

‘A Critique of GCSE History: the results of The Historical Association Survey’, Teaching History, Vol. 55, March 1989.

1990-1999

‘History Textbook Round-up’, Teachers’ Weekly, September 1990.

‘Partnership and the Training of Student History Teachers’, with M. Booth and G. Shawyer, in M. Booth, J. Furlong and M. Wilkin (eds.), Partnership in Initial Teacher Training, (Cassell), 1990.

Economy and Society in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (Routledge), 1991.

Church and State in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (Routledge), 1991.

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC), 1991.

‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’, Teaching History, 63, April 1991.

‘BTEC and History’, in John Fines (ed.), History 16-19, (The Historical Association), 1991.

‘What about the author?’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, Vol. 2, (1), September 1991.

‘Appeasement: A matter of opinion?’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, Vol. 2, (2), January 1992.

Economic Revolutions 1750-1850 (Cambridge Topics in History, Cambridge University Press), 1992.

‘Suez: a question of causation’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, Vol. 4, (1), September 1993.

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC,) 1993.

History and post-16 vocational courses’, in H. Bourdillon (ed.), Teaching History, (Routledge), 1993.

‘Learning effectively at Advanced Level’, pamphlet for PGCE ITT course, (Open University), 1994.

Preparing for Inspection, (The Historical Association), 1994.

Managing the Learning of History, (David Fulton), 1995.

Chartism: People, Events and Ideas (Perspectives in History, Cambridge University Press), 1998.

BBC History File: consultant on five Key Stage 3 programmes on Britain 1750-1900, 1999.

2000-2009

Revolution, Radicalism and Reform: England 1780-1846, (Perspectives in History, Cambridge University Press), 2001.

‘The state in the 1840s’, Modern History Review, September 2003.

‘Chartism and the state’, Modern History Review, November 2003.

‘Chadwick and Simon: the problem of public health reform’, Modern History Review, April 2005.

2010

Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839, Eureka 1854, (Clio Publishing), 2010.

2011

Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839, Eureka 1854, (Clio Publishing), 2011 Kindle edition.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882, (Clio Publishing), 2011.

Economy, Population and Transport (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

Work, Health and Poverty, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

Education, Crime and Leisure, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

Class, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

2012

Religion and Government, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2012 Kindle edition.

Society under Pressure: Britain 1830-1914, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2012 Kindle edition.

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain, 1830-1918, (Authoring History), 2012.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882, (Clio Publishing), 2012 Kindle edition.

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1830-1918, 2012,  Kindle edition.

Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885 Volume 1: Autocracy, Rebellion and Liberty, (Authoring History), 2012.

Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885, Volume 2: The Irish, the Fenians and the Metis, (Authoring History), 2012.

2013

Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, Clio Publishing, 2013.

Settler Australia, 1780-1880, Volume 1: Settlement, Protest and Control, (Authoring History), 2013.

Settler Australia, 1780-1880, Volume 2: Eureka and Democracy, (Authoring History), 2013.

Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885, 2013, Kindle edition.

'A Peaceable Kingdom': Essays on Nineteenth Century Canada, (Authoring History), 2013.

Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, 2013, Kindle edition.

Settler Australia, 1780-1880, 2013, Kindle Edition.

Coping with Change: British Society, 1780-1914, (Authoring History), 2013.

2014

Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance, (Authoring History), 2014.

Suger: The Life of Louis VI 'the Fat', (Authoring History), 2014, Kindle edition.

Chartism: Rise and Demise, (Authoring History), 2014.

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain, 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2014.

Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance, (Authoring History), 2014, Kindle edition.

2015

Chartism: Rise and Demise, (Authoring History), 2015, Kindle edition.

'Development of the Professions', in Ross, Alastair, Innovating Professional Services: Transforming Value and Efficiency, (Ashgate), 2015, pp. 271-274.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The Midlands and the South, (Authoring History), 2015.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The North, Scotland Wales and Ireland, (Authoring History), 2015.

2016

Chartism, Regions and Economies, (Authoring History), 2016.

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, (Authoring History), 2016.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The Midlands and the South, (Authoring History), 2016, Kindle edition.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The North, Scotland Wales and Ireland, (Authoring History), 2015, Kindle edition.

Chartism, Regions and Economies, (Authoring History), 2016, Kindle edition.

Suger: The Life of Louis VI 'the Fat', revised edition, (Authoring History), 2016.

Robert Guiscard: Portrait of a Warlord, (Authoring History), 2016.

Chartism: A Global History and other essays, (Authoring History), 2016.

Chartism: A Global History and other essays, (Authoring History), 2016, Kindle edition.

Roger of Sicily: Portrait of a Ruler, (Authoring History), 2016.

Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, (Authoring History), 2016.

2017

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, (Authoring History), 2017.

Disrupting the British World, 1600-1980, (Authoring History), 2017.

Britain 1780-1850: A Simple Guide, (Authoring History), 2017.

People and Places: Britain 1780-1950, (Authoring History), 2017.

2018

Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure, (Authoring History), 2018.

Britain 1780-1945: Reforming Society, (Authoring History), 2018.

Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, (Authoring History), 2018. Kindle edition.

Disrupting the British World, 1600-1980, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Britain 1780-1945: Reforming Society, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Robert Guiscard: Portrait of a Warlord, (Authoring History), 2016, 2018, Kindle edition.

Roger of Sicily: Portrait of a Ruler, (Authoring History), 2016,  2018, Kindle edition.

People and Places: Britain 1780-1950, (Authoring History), 2017, 2018, Kindle edition.

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, (Authoring History), 2016, 2018, Kindle edition.

2019

Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860, Authoring History), 2019.

Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860, Authoring History), 2019, Kindle edition.

2020

The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2020.

Canada's 'Wars of Religion', (Authoring History), 2020.

The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2020, Kindle edition.

2021

Canada's 'Wars of Religion', (Authoring History), 2021, Kindle edition.

The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2021, hardback.

Economy, Population and Transport 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2021, paperback and hardback.

2022

Classes and Cultures 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback.

Work, Health and Poverty 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback

Education and Crime 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback

Watford FC, Luton FC and Bushey

The current attempts by Watford FC to seek a new stadium as Vicarage Road is no longer fit for purpose reminds me of a similar campaign in Luton that has already lasted four decades and yet remains to be concluded.  Kenilworth Road, Luton’s ground, is like Vicarage Road situated in a built up area and was officially opened in 1905, some seventeen years before Vicarage Road first hosted football.  In both cases, there are strong arguments for a move to a new site especially as current health and safety rules mean that the original capacity of the grounds had been significantly reduced.

The question then is not whether a new ground is justifiable but where that ground is best placed.  This process began in Luton with a proposal in 1982 to move to a super stadium in Milton Keynes to play as MK Hatters.  Not surprisingly, this proved short-lived and was dropped after vehement opposition within Luton.  The Football League refused Luton permission to move to Milton Keynes in 2000, saying that a member club was not allowed to leave its home-town. Unless this ruling has since been rescinded, it means that Watford would be unable to move to any location outside its boundaries and consequently not to Bushey.  

Proposals for a new ground adjacent to the M1 were suggested in 1995 , 2001 and 2007 by different club chairmen but were either rejected or withdrawn.  By 2012, the club was undertaking an independent feasibility study to determine a viable new location. Sites mooted included a ground built as part of a new housing development to the west of Luton and a site by the proposed Junction 11A of the M1, which is the preferred site of the local authorities.

Luton Town did not rule out staying at a redeveloped Kenilworth Road but by mid-2015 this had been ruled out in favour of a move to a new location. The club announced its new preferred location in December 2015—Power Court in central Luton, near the Mall and St Anne's Church, a 23,000-capacity stadium in the town centre that would be financed by a shopping and leisure facility next to the M1.  This was finally approved in early 2020. The Power Court location is popular with supporters as it remains within Luton, is around a mile from Kenilworth Road and not far from the railway station.  Things are currently on hold but 2020 Developments Ltd, the property arm of the Hatters has freehold ownership of the land and an uncontended planning permission.

My point is that Luton’s experience demonstrates the difficulty of developing a new ground even if it is something that the club and its supporters want.  It has taken four decades to get where we are now and the pandemic may well have an impact on the viability of the shopping and leisure facility near the M1.  What is clear about the Bushey proposal is that it has not been fully thought through.  For instance, the report in the Watford Observer on 5 March is paper-thin though this has been upped to pre-application advice between the Club and the Council in recent days.  This presumably accounts for a petition opposing the plans currently circulating…local Conservative councillors have little choice but to support this with an eye to future re-election.  There is no firm proposal as yet and, if Watford is relegated (a not unthinkable proposition), I doubt it would have the resources to sustain such an expensive project.  As Luton found, changing to a new stadium is a long road replete with pitfalls. 

Peterloo: 200th anniversary

With the 200th anniversary of the unprovoked attack by the forces of the local state on an unarmed crowd in Manchester while there is no question about the significance of the event, there are important questions about what the impact of the ‘massacre’ was in the short and longer term and what its continuing significance is for democracy today.  This post examines those issues.

 

Habeas Corpus  was revived early in 1818 and the Seditious Meetings Act lapsed in July. However, economic distress returned in late 1818 and radicalism revived in 1819 reaching its peak in the ‘Peterloo Massacre’.[1] The Thistlewood group may have failed to raise London during the Spa Fields riot but continued with its conspiratorial plans. They considered plans for a rising in London in October 1817 and in February 1818 plotted to assassinate Sidmouth and other members of the government.[2] In 1818, Thistlewood was imprisoned for a year for challenging Sidmouth to a duel.[3] The rest of the group, led by the Watsons, mollified their tactics and continued their mission in association with Henry Hunt making significant progress in Lancashire.

 

Although the industrial districts of Lancashire were one of the centres of radical reform, by 1819 there was mass mobilisation in all the major cities. A massive meeting of workers had assembled on St. Peter’s Field to see off the ‘Blanketeers’ from Manchester in 1817. The following year saw strikes aimed at restoring falling wage levels showing workers’ discipline and organisation, with meetings and marches in Manchester and Stockport.[4] Pressure created by poor economic conditions reached a peak in 1819 greatly boosting the appeal of radical politics amongst cotton weavers in south Lancashire. Mass meetings for parliamentary reform and for the repeal of the Corn Laws took place in Stockport and Manchester during the first half of 1819. By July, workers were drilling on the moors outside working-class districts in Lancashire, something paralleled in other parts of the country and as many as 2,000 workers paraded in semi-military formation along the High Road from Manchester to a reform meeting in Rochdale.[5] These preparations were primarily aimed at improving organisation for a mass meeting at St. Peter’s Field originally planned for 2 August and delayed until 9 August.[6] The meeting in Manchester was part of a broader national effort for July and August 1819 that saw large meetings in Birmingham, Leeds and London.[7]

 

The local ruling elite in Manchester had already prepared for mass radical action. In July, the local magistracy formed an ‘Armed Association for the Preservation of the Peace’ and enrolled Special Constables. A letter from Joseph Johnson, one of the leaders of the Manchester Patriotic Union, to Henry Hunt asking him to chair the meeting was intercepted by government spies and interpreted as meaning that an insurrection was planned. The government responded by ordering the 15th Hussars to Manchester and local yeomanry was also mobilised. Local magistrates had already been advised by the Home Office that the intention of the meeting to elect a MP was a serious misdemeanour and this encouraged them to declare the meeting planned for 9 August illegal.[8] If this was intended to discourage radicals, it failed. Hunt and his supporters were determined to assemble and a new meeting was organised for 16 August.

 

Assembly points were announced where people in the towns and districts surrounding Manchester could gather and then march in disciplined contingents to the meeting on 16 August. This was an expression of local and community identities as well as demonstrating respectability as proof of their right to manhood suffrage.[9] The local radical committees made it clear that no weapons were to be carried by the contingents but they were drilled in the fields round Manchester, buttressing the authorities’ fears. Manchester’s ten magistrates met at around 9.00 am to discuss what action to take on Hunt’s arrival but after ninety minutes had come to no firm conclusions. They then moved to a house on the south-eastern corner of St. Peter’s Field to allow them to observe the meeting. Concerned that the meeting might degenerate into a riot or more seriously rebellion, a substantial number of regular troops and militia yeomanry were deployed.[10]

 

There was a confident and festive atmosphere as the contingents gathered and prepared to march. Bands played and banners were unfurled. Oldham’s banner was of pure white silk with the inscriptions: ‘Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliaments--Election by Ballot’, and ‘No Combination Acts’ while Saddleworth’s was jet black with ‘Equal Representation or Death’ in white over two joined hands and a heart. One of the banners carried by the Stockport contingent read: ‘Success to the Female Reformers of Stockport’. It has been estimated that women made up about 12 per cent of the crowd was and a particular feature of the meeting was the large number of women present. By the time the contingents assembled on St. Peter’s Field, they were packed in so tightly that one contemporary commented that ‘their hats seems to touch’, and numbered 60,000 people, six per cent of the population of the county of Lancashire and up to a half of that in the immediate area round Manchester. The casualty list suggests that most lived within a three miles radius of the centre of the city.[11]

 

At around noon, several hundred Special Constables were sent into the field and formed a corridor through the crowd between the house where the magistrates were watching and the hustings of two wagons lashed together. Whether this was intended by the magistrates to provide a route that could be used to arrest the speakers or not, some in the crowd pushed the wagons away from the constables and pressed around the hustings to form a human barrier. Hunt arrived at the meeting shortly after 1.00 pm and was joined on the hustings by John Knight, a cotton manufacturer and reformer, Joseph Johnson, the organiser of the meeting, Thacker Sexton, managing editor of the Manchester Observer, Richard Carlile and George Swift, a reformer and shoemaker. There were also a number of reporters, including John Tyas of The Times whose account was widely used in contemporary accounts, John Smith of the Liverpool Echo and Edward Baines Jr., the son of the editor of the Leeds Mercury.[12] Seeing the enthusiastic reception that Hunt received, William Hulton, chairman of the local magistrates decided to arrest him and others on the platform.

 

 

Jonathan Andrews, the Chief Constable, expressed the view that he would need military assistance given the crowd round the hustings. Hulton then sent two letters, one to the commanding officer of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry and a second to Lieutenant-Colonel Guy L’Estrange, overall military commander in Manchester asking for support since he considered ‘the Civil Power wholly inadequate to preserve the peace.’ It was the Yeomanry that arrived first at about 1.40 pm. With instructions to escort Deputy Constable Joseph Nadin to the hustings with the arrest warrant, the militia set off down the narrow corridor formed by the Special Constables but quickly got bogged down by the crush. The Yeomanry, inexperienced in crowd control, panicked and began hacking the crowd with their sabres. Nadin reached the hustings and arrested Hunt, Johnson and several others but by this time matters were out of control.

 

 

Hulton saw these events as an assault on the Yeomanry and when the regular troops arrived at 1.50 pm, they were ordered to disperse the densely packed crowd. The Hussars formed line across the eastern edge of the Field and charged into the crowd while the Cheshire Yeomanry moved from the southern edge of the Field at about the same time; the result was carnage but within ten minutes the crowd was dispersed. Peace was not finally restored in Manchester until the following morning and in Stockport, Oldham and Macclesfield rioting continued during that day. Eleven of the fatalities occurred on St Peter’s Field. Others, such as John Lees of Oldham, died later of their wounds, and some like Joshua Whitworth were killed in the rioting that followed the crowd’s dispersal from the field. Of the 654 recorded casualties, at least 168 were women, four of whom died either at St Peter’s Field or later as a result of their wounds.[13]

 

There was a wave of public support for the radical cause and even The Times attacked the actions of the Manchester magistrates. The mass movement for reform was not appreciably set back by the Peterloo massacre and this demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of aristocratic government. A huge crowd estimated by The Times at 300,000 lined the streets of London to greet Hunt after his release from jail. There were meetings all over England, especially in the north-east counties where more than 50,000 miners marched into Newcastle from surrounding districts. In October and November, workers across the country stocked pikes and other weapons to defend themselves and their meetings. Drilling and armed demonstrations were reported in Newcastle, Wolverhampton, Wigan, Bolton and Blackburn. The massacre reinforced radical imagery of abusive state power contrasting the uncontrolled passions of repressive state apparatus in the role of Edmund’s Burke image of the hellish mob with the restraint, order and moral purity of the people. Sir Francis Burdett’s ‘Address to the Electors of Westminster’, published in the Black Dwarf nine days after the massacre, made clear the unconstitutional, unchristian and un-English violence of the authorities in turning on a defenceless people. The radical movement may have held the moral high ground but, for Hunt and the radical leadership, the problem was how to translate this into practical actions. Most radicals, who maintained a constitutionalist stance, relied on the government responding to the threat of physical force by conceding reform.[14] This increased support for firm government action when public order and property were threatened and was anyway unlikely to succeed. The radical leadership failed to harness this backlash against the government and within weeks lost the initiative. In Lancashire, radicalism was riven by division between the majority who supported Hunt and a conspiratorial minority and by the arrest of key figures on 22 December 1819.[15] Threatening violence was one thing, translating it into open rebellion another. What radicals from Hunt to Feargus O’Connor never satisfactorily resolved was: ‘What happens when the government says no?’

 

By contrast, the authorities locally and nationally responded to Peterloo decisively and the use of violence was officially endorsed. The Manchester magistrates held a supposedly public meeting on 19 August, so that resolutions supporting the action they had taken three days earlier could be published. Cotton merchants Archibald Prentice, later editor of The Manchester Times and Absalom Watkin organised a petition of protest against the violence at St Peter’s Field that also questioned the legitimacy of the magistrates’ meeting and within a few days it had collected 4,800 signatures.[16] Parliament was not sitting between 13 July and 23 November 1819 delaying any parliamentary scrutiny of the government’s actions. Liverpool and Sidmouth had advised the Manchester magistrates against taking any precipitous action and may have been privately appalled by the magistrates’ rashness, but they had little choice but publicly to approve their actions.[17] On 27 August, Sidmouth informed the magistrates of the thanks of the Prince Regent for preserving the public peace. Such was the centrality of the magistracy to effective government that Liverpool was prepared to risk temporary excoriation by supporting them. Those involved in the assault on the crowd were also exonerated. Later, in April 1822, a test case was brought against four members of the Manchester Yeomanry at the Lancaster Assizes but the court ruled that their actions had been justified in dispersing an illegal gathering and they were acquitted.[18]

 

The government did not intend to give in to radical demands for parliamentary reform as was made very clear by the Prince Regent at the opening of Parliament in November 1819:

 

I regret to have been under the necessity of calling you together at this period of the year; but the seditious practices so long prevalent in some of the manufacturing districts of the country have been continued with increased activity since you were last assembled in parliament.

They have led to proceedings incompatible with the public tranquillity, and with the peaceful habits of the industrious classes, of the community; and a spirit is now fully manifested, utterly hostile to the constitution of this kingdom, and aiming not only at the change of those political institutions which have hitherto constituted the pride and security of this country, but at, the subversion of the rights of property and of all order in society.

I have given directions that the necessary information on this subject shall be laid before you; and I feel it to be my indispensable duty, to press on your immediate attention the consideration of such measures as may be requisite for the counteraction and suppression of a system which, if not effectually checked, must bring confusion and ruin on the nation.[19]

 

Repression was re-imposed and coercive legislation, the ‘Six Acts’, was quickly introduced in December 1819. The Seditious Meetings, Training Prevention and Seizure of Arms Bills were designed to prevent intimidation and violence.[20] The Newspaper Stamp Duties and Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Bills were intended to curb agitation in the radical press.[21] The former increased the stamp duty on newspapers and cheap pamphlets to 4d while the Misdemeanours Bill restricted the right of appeal of those charged with such offences. This gave the government powers to deal harshly with even slight expressions of discontent. However, ministers resisted calls for an increase in the standing army but did mobilise loyalist support with the Home Office using the loyalist press as a counterweight to the often seditious publications in the radical press. Loyalist public meetings were hurriedly called, loyal addresses heaped praise on the government and volunteer forces were organised by local elites. This proved highly successful but marked the last occasion when ministers felt they could rely on loyalist support and propaganda to regain and sustain control. Peterloo had highlighted the tenuous nature of authority in industrial and urban Britain and led, in the 1820s, to a fundamental review of how best to maintain law and order.[22]

 

The leading Whigs were unanimous in their denunciation of the brutality, but were divided on how closely they should involve the party in the popular protest movement being promoted by incensed radicals. The few Whig initiatives achieved little. Earl Fitzwilliam supported the Yorkshire county meeting on 14 October. It adopted the resolutions he drafted: the right to public assembly and condemnation of unlawful interference with it and a demand for an inquiry into Peterloo.[23] This spurred further Whig meetings in nine English counties--Norfolk, Cumberland, Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, Durham, Westmorland, Berkshire, Cornwall and Herefordshire--in October and those in Surrey, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, Northumberland and Essex in November were unsuccessful, while in Hampshire and Middlesex they were cancelled when an emergency session of Parliament was announced. The dismissal of Fitzwilliam as Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire on 21 October angered Whigs of all opinion and even Lord Grey, their far from animated leader, encouraged attendance for a robust parliamentary campaign. Distaste for the barbarity of Peterloo and the government’s reaction to it reinforced Whig belief that an effective measure of parliamentary reform was essential. On 18 February 1820, Lord John Russell argued the case for transferring seats from boroughs disfranchised for corruption to unrepresented industrial towns, specifically calling for the disfranchisement of Grampound. He withdrew his motion when government ministers accepted his proposals and Grampound was disfranchised in 1821, but its seats went to the county of Yorkshire.[24]

---

[1] Read, Donald, Peterloo: The ‘massacre’ and its background, (Manchester University Press), 1958, remains a useful study while Walmsley, R., Peterloo: the case reopened, (Manchester University Press), 1969, is a detailed study that over-reacts in its defence of government, local and national, Marlow, Joyce, The Peterloo Massacre, (Rapp and Whiting), 1969, Reid, R., The Peterloo Massacre, (Heinemann), 1989, Phythian, Graham, Peterloo: Voices, Sabres and Silence, (History Press), 2018, Riding, Jacqueline, Peterloo: The Story of the Manchester Massacre, (Head of Zeus), 2018, and Poole, Robert, Peterloo: The English Uprising, (Oxford University Press), 2019, provide contrasting narratives. Manchester Region History Review, Vol. 3, (1), (1989) contains several useful articles; Poole, Robert, ‘”By the Law or the Sword”: Peterloo Revisited’, History, Vol. 91, (2006), pp. 254-276, is the most recent reappraisal. See also, Bush, M. L., The Casualties of Peterloo, (Carnegie Publishing Ltd.), 2005.[2] ‘Trials for High Treason’, London Courier and Evening Gazette, 16 June 1817, pp. 5-6. ‘State Trials’, Morning Chronicle, 17 June 1817, pp. 1, 2, 3, 4..[3] ‘King v. Arthur Thistlewood’, Morning Chronicle, 15 May 1818, p. 2.[4] ‘Striking for Wages’, Morning Post, 21 July 1818, p. 2, [5] ‘Reform Meeting at Rochdale’, Morning Advertiser, 29 July 1818, p. 2, suggests a procession of at least 5,000 people; see also, ‘State of the Disturbed Districts’, Morning Post, 2 August 1819, p. 2.[6] ‘State of the Disturbed Districts’, Morning Post, 4 August 1819, p. 2.[7] Peterloo Massacre containing A Faithful Narrative of the Events, which preceded, accompanied and followed the fatal Sixteenth of August 1819….Edited by an Observer, 3rd ed., (James Wroe), 1819 Ibid, Bamford, Samuel, Passages in The Life of A Radical, Vol. 1, pp. 176-226, remains a central, if written in retrospect, narrative of events on 16 August 1819. Bruton, Francis Archibald, Three Accounts of Peterloo and The Story of Peterloo, (The University Press, Manchester), 1921, prints eye-witness accounts by Rev Edward Stanley later Bishop of Norwich and written in 1821, Sir William Jolliffe, first Baron Hylton and a Lieutenant in the 15th Hussars first published in 1847, and John Benjamin Smith, businessman and strong advocate of Free Trade, probably written in the decade before his death in 1879 and strikingly corroborative of Bamford’s account.[8] ‘Manchester Meeting’, Morning Advertiser, 5 August 1819, pp. 2, 4.[9] Navickas, Katrina, Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789-1848, (Manchester University Press), 2016, p. 82[10] The military presence consisted of 600 men of the 15th Hussars, several hundred infantry, a Royal Horse Artillery unit with two six-pounder cannons, 400 men of the Cheshire Yeomanry, 400 Special Constables and 120 cavalry of the relatively inexperienced Manchester and Salford Yeomanry. The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry was largely made up of local merchants, manufacturers, publicans and shopkeepers, all rabid opponents of the radical movement.[11] Ibid, Bush, M. L., The Casualties of Peterloo, p. 19.[12] Detailed accounts of the meeting included those u ‘Manchester Reform Meeting’, Leeds Mercury, 21 August 1819, p. 3 ‘The Manchester Meeting’, Morning Post, 19 August 1819, p. 2, ‘The Manchester Meeting and its Dispersion by Force of Arms’, Liverpool Mercury, 20 August 1819, pp. 7, 8, [13] Ibid, Bush, M. L., The Casualties of Peterloo, pp. 30-31.[14] Demson, Michael, and Hewitt, Regina, (eds.), Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-Making during th Romantic Era, (Edinburgh University Press), 2019, Morgan, Alison, Ballads and Songs of Peterloo, (Manchester University Press), 2018.[15] The Trial of Henry Hunt, Esq, John Knight, Joseph Johnson and others for Conspiracy, (W. Molineux), 1820.[16] Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 29 November 1819. Vol. 41, cc357-370, detailed the presentation of the Manchester petition.[17] Cookson, J. E., Lord Liverpool’s Administration, 1815-1822, (Scottish Academic Press), 1975, pp. 178-199, Mitchell, Austin, The Whigs in Opposition, 1815-1830, (Oxford University Press), 1967, pp. 125-137.[18] ‘Bishop Stanley’s evidence at the trial in 1822’, in ibid, Bruton, Francis Archibald, Three Accounts of Peterloo and The Story of Peterloo, pp. 25-38.[19] Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 23 November 1819, Vol. 41, cc1-3.[20] Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 2 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc594-678. Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 2 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc578-594, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 6 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc757-804, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 7 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc816-851, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 8 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc863-878. [21] Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 6 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc706-755, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 10 December 1819, Vol. 41, cc977-989.[22] Gardner, John, Poetry and Popular Protest: Peterloo, Cato Street and the Queen Caroline Controversy, (Palgrave Macmillan), 2011, pp. 11-102, examines the cultural response to Peterloo by Samuel Bamford, William Hone and Shelley.[23] Smith, E. A., Whig Principles and Party Politics: Earl Fitzwilliam and the Whig Party, 1748-1833, (Manchester University Press), 1975, pp. 347-353. See also, Barber, Brian, ‘William Wrightson, the Yorkshire Whigs and the York ‘Peterloo’ Protest Meeting of 1819’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. 83, (2011), pp. 164-174. See also the debate on the state of the country, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 30 November 1819, Vol. 41, cc517-569.[24] Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 18 February 1820, Vol. 41, cc1612-1614, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 28 April 1820, Vol. 1, c39, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 9 May 1820, Vol. 1, cc237-241, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 19 May 1820, Vol. 1, cc480-520, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 5 June 1820, Vol. 1, cc863-868, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 12 February 1821, Vol. 4, cc583-606, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 2 March 1821, Vol. 4, cc1068-1076, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 5 March 1821, Vol. 4, cc1077-1078, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 11 April 1821, Vol. 5, cc151-153, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 10 May 1821, Vol. 5, cc626-633, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 14 May 1821, Vol. 5, cc693-698, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 21 May 1821, Vol. 5, cc853-858, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 24 May 1821, Vol. 5, cc973-974, Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 30 May 1821, Vol. 5, cc1043-1046.