Peterloo: When a Peaceful Protest became a Military Emergency

Watching the current demonstrations in Paris, one is reminded that governments have a remarkable ability to see whatever they want when looking at an angry crowd.  President Emmanuel Macron has apparently discovered that, if you squint hard enough, a protest can look remarkably like a parade.  And should the distinction become too difficult to make, there is always the option of leaving the country.  Macron recently embarked on a three-day tour of five Persian Gulf countries while France was still dealing with the aftermath of massive demonstrations.  Presumably, the view from Qatar offers a somewhat more reassuring perspective on French domestic politics.

The French, of course, have a long and distinguished tradition of expressing displeasure with their governments.  Occasionally, buildings catch fire.  Sometimes a king loses his head.  Compared with the eighteenth century, today's politicians have relatively little to complain about.

The British, meanwhile, have traditionally preferred to think of themselves as more restrained.  Their political reforms were supposedly achieved through sensible debate, parliamentary compromise, and stiff upper lips.  This comforting national mythology tends to overlook August 16, 1819, when British cavalry attacked approximately 60,000 people who were assembled peacefully in Manchester to demand parliamentary reform.

The event became known as the Peterloo Massacre.  It remains one of the more disgraceful episodes in modern British political and military history.

Britain After Waterloo

Four years earlier, Britain and its allies had finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.  After more than two decades of almost continuous warfare with revolutionary and then Napoleonic France, peace had returned to Europe.  Unfortunately, peace did not bring prosperity to the ordinary British worker.

The end of the war brought demobilization, unemployment, and economic depression.  Soldiers who had spent long years learning how to break things and kill people returned home expecting to resume their civilian lives, only to discover that civilian life had very little use for them.  Industrial workers suffered from declining wages, while the price of food remained painfully high.

The Corn Laws of 1815 made matters worse by restricting grain imports until the market price hit a minimum floor, thus protecting British landowners from foreign competition while maintaining high bread prices.  This was an excellent arrangement if you happened to own several thousand acres of farmland worked by underpaid peasants.  It was somewhat less attractive if your children were hungry.

The political system offered little opportunity for relief.  Parliamentary representation was distributed according to arrangements that would have delighted a medieval nobleman.  Some almost deserted villages, known as rotten boroughs, continued electing members of Parliament, while rapidly growing industrial cities remained grossly underrepresented.

Manchester, already an enormous center of textile manufacturing, had no parliamentary representation of its own.

The people who created much of Britain's industrial wealth had virtually no voice in determining how the country was governed.

The Radicals Assemble

Radicals, at least in this time and place, were dangerous extremists who entertained such alarming notions as giving Manchester parliamentary representation and questioning why a nearly deserted borough owned by a single aristocrat could send two members to Parliament.  Some even believed that a working man might possess a political opinion worth hearing.  Naturally, gentlemen who inherited their influence regarded this as an assault on civilization.

The reform movement demanded broader voting rights, fairer parliamentary representation, and an end to the political dominance of wealthy landowners.

One of its most prominent leaders was Henry Hunt, a charismatic speaker known as Orator Hunt.  He advocated parliamentary reform and believed that large, peaceful public meetings could demonstrate the strength of popular support.

Reformers organized a demonstration for August 16, 1819, at St.  Peter's Field in Manchester.

The organizers made considerable efforts to ensure that the meeting remained peaceful.  Participants were instructed to arrive unarmed, wear their best clothing, and maintain orderly behavior.  Groups marched into Manchester from surrounding towns carrying banners, accompanied by bands and sometimes entire families.

Women participated prominently.  Female reform societies carried their own banners, and Mary Fildes, president of the Manchester Female Reform Society, stood on the speakers' platform.

It was, in many respects, a festive and entirely peaceful occasion.

Indeed, had the Manchester magistrates squinted appropriately, they might have mistaken the entire gathering for a parade.

Unfortunately, the magistrates were not inclined toward creative interpretation.

The Cavalry Charge

Local authorities had become increasingly alarmed by the growth of radical politics.  The French Revolution remained a particularly unpleasant memory for Britain's governing classes, who could imagine no circumstances under which ordinary people who were demanding political rights might be anything other than potential revolutionaries.

From a nearby building, the Manchester magistrates observed the growing crowd

Eventually, they decided to arrest Hunt and several other speakers.

Rather than sending a few constables to deliver an arrest warrant, they summoned the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, a volunteer cavalry force composed largely of local men, including tradesmen and shopkeepers.

The yeomanry were neither especially well-trained nor particularly sympathetic toward the demonstrators.  More than a few had been drinking.

Armed with sabers and mounted on horses, they charged into a densely packed crowd containing men, women, and children.

There was nowhere for thousands of people to escape.

The cavalry hacked at demonstrators, while terrified spectators trampled one another in attempts to flee.  Banners were torn down.  People were knocked to the ground, struck with sabers, or crushed beneath horses.

The regular army's 15th Hussars was subsequently ordered into the field to help clear the crowd.

Ironically, some of these soldiers had participated in the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo four years earlier.  Having helped defeat a foreign emperor, they were now similarly employed against British civilians demanding the right to participate in their own government.

Among the victims was two-year-old William Fildes, knocked from his mother's arms in the confusion surrounding the military’s arrival and mortally wounded when trampled by horses.

In a matter of minutes, an entirely peaceful political gathering had become a scene of extraordinary violence.  Modern accounts generally identify eighteen people who died from injuries associated with the massacre, while approximately 700 suffered injuries.

For a demonstration whose organizers had explicitly discouraged violence, the consequences were appalling.

Why Peterloo?

The name was deliberately sarcastic.

The Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 had been celebrated as one of Britain's greatest military victories.  Four years later, British cavalry had distinguished itself by attacking unarmed civilians in Manchester.

The comparison was irresistible.

Journalists and reformers began calling the event Peterloo, combining St.  Peter's Field with Waterloo.  It was not intended as a compliment.

The name captured the absurdity of treating peaceful working-class demonstrators as though they were enemy soldiers on a battlefield.

One suspects that the authorities would have preferred something less memorable.

The Government Responds

Surely, you say, after cavalrymen had killed and injured hundreds of British citizens, the government would investigate the disaster, punish those responsible, and reconsider the grievances that had brought so many people together.

That would have been a reasonable response.

The British government chose a different approach.

The authorities defended the magistrates and the troops.  Reform leaders, including Hunt, were arrested and prosecuted.

Rather than expanding political rights, Parliament enacted the Six Acts in December 1819, restricting large public meetings, tightening controls on radical publications, and providing additional powers to suppress political agitation.

The government had discovered a familiar principle: if citizens complain about being denied political representation, the quickest solution is apparently to make complaining more difficult.

The repression nevertheless generated widespread outrage.

Journalists, reformers, and ordinary citizens condemned the violence.  The radical newspaper The Manchester Observer helped popularize the name Peterloo.  John Edward Taylor, horrified by the events, subsequently helped establish The Manchester Guardian in 1821.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, then living in Italy, responded with his extraordinary political poem The Masque of Anarchy, attacking the government and calling for nonviolent resistance.

The massacre had become a symbol of the struggle for democratic reform.

Did Peterloo Accomplish Anything?

Nope.   At least not immediately.

Hunt went to prison.  The government strengthened its powers of repression.  The aristocratic parliamentary system continued operating much as before.

But Peterloo permanently damaged the claim that Britain was governed through a harmonious relationship between rulers and ruled.

The massacre exposed the willingness of Britain's political establishment to employ military force against people demanding representation.  It also demonstrated that parliamentary reform had become a national issue that could not simply be ignored.

The Reform Act of 1832 eventually eliminated many rotten boroughs and gave Manchester parliamentary representation.  However, most working-class men remained excluded from voting.

Further reforms followed in 1867 and 1884.  Broad male suffrage and limited female suffrage arrived in 1918, while women finally obtained equal voting rights with men in 1928.

From Peterloo to equal parliamentary voting rights, the process took more than a century.

A Familiar Problem

There is something depressingly timeless about the events of August 1819.

Ordinary people face economic hardship.  They conclude that their government is indifferent to their grievances.  They organize demonstrations.  Political leaders interpret the protests primarily as threats to public order rather than evidence of public dissatisfaction.

Sometimes the demonstrations turn violent.  Sometimes the violence begins with those supposedly responsible for maintaining order.

And occasionally, a government discovers that the distinction between protecting the state and protecting those who govern it has become rather difficult to maintain.

The Peterloo demonstrators were not attempting to overthrow the British monarchy or establish a revolutionary republic.  They wanted a political system in which the industrial population of Britain enjoyed meaningful representation.

That demand seems remarkably modest today.

Yet in 1819 it was considered sufficiently dangerous to warrant cavalry charges against unarmed men, women, and children.

The next time we watch demonstrations in Paris, London, or elsewhere, we might remember the people of St.  Peter's Field.

Governments are rarely enthusiastic about large crowds demanding change.  But history suggests that the consequences of refusing to listen can be considerably more serious than the inconvenience of a protest.

And if the crowd really does look like a parade, perhaps it would be wise to leave the cavalry in the barracks.