alternatehistory.com

I, III: Peterloo & The Beginning of the End

Before 1819, Radicals met in public houses and drank ale while plotting a revolutionary future. Henry Hunt brought their cause into the open, championed it and refined to be a way to occupy the mainstream of British political consciousness at the right time. But their venom, their bite, was no match for the antidote of feeble opposition and a lacklustre, ideologically inactive and reactionary government. To win power for the people, they needed action. Groups such as the Spenceans, drawing from Jacobin culture began, after the Spa Fields Riot, pivoting to organised violence and attempts at causing a wider uprising. Hunt opposed the violence and heightened the difference between the Radical movement, which moved more towards the Revolutionary means and subsequently withdrew to the secret societies and the Reform movement, which stepped out into the public and demanded Parliamentary representation but we’re growing more coherent and more confidently, seizing mass support to the point where Hunt and his followers could make a serious claim to be the leading voice of working class sentiment. While the platform changed around the country; annual parliaments, universal manhood suffrage and vote by ballot were the common factors.

In Manchester, economic concerns, fuelled by the transition of the city to a growing urban industrial metropolis and the post war slump from 1815-1817, they were hit by a second slump early in 1819 that further pushed many into destitution. The answer to the working class and the growing urban middle class was simple - suffrage. A mobilised and politicised middle and working class would improve productivity and bring much needed vigour to the creaking political system. With the new economic deterioration, the Reform movement sought the time was right to harness political ill-will to force a government change to bring about parliamentary reform and the franchise. In August, it was the Manchester Patriotic Union, who consisted of well to do urban middle class patrons who invited Henry Hunt to speak in a Peters Field meeting advocating Reform. The gathering of over 60,000 attendees in the field was watched over by magistrates, who wished to immediately crush and disperse the crowds. They called on the Manchester & Salford Yeomanry to break up the meeting and arrest Hunt. After a hefty feed of ale, the Yeomanry broke into the meeting, charged into the crowd knocking down a woman and killing a child. They apprehended Hunt, when the Cheshire Magistrates chairman, William Hilton ordered the 15th Hussars to disperse the crowd. They charged with sabres at the crowd and killed around 15 people. In the ensuing chaos and panic, 700 more were injured. The papers including the Manchester Observer, who covered the meeting extensively, dubbed the massacre Peterloo, an ironic twist on the battle that won the British the Napoleonic War, it’s finest moment. News of Peterloo spread like wildfire, and sparked a year of localised retaliatory riots in British Cities. Hunt was incarcerated, people were shocked and the Liverpool Ministry praised their actions. People of all classes who saw the massacre saw this as a turning point. It was.


Agitation for constitutional reform from the Radical movement increased during this time, and in the movement at large, with Hunt in prison, a differing coalition of Radicals and Reformers, now splintering into more defined groups, came to the fore. In Scotland, the Radical War saw Glasgow’s Committee for the Organisation of a Provisional Government once again take advantage of poor economic conditions to call a General Strike, pulling 60,000 workers out of the production line. The Yeomanry were once again called out, 88 men were charged with treason, the leaders were hanged and over 20 were transported to Australia. They called it the “Battle of Bonnymuir” in the “Radical War”. Similar uprisings occurred in Yorkshire, where in Huddersfield outside Radical militias marched on the city, with 400 members in a town of 15,000 forming a fifth column to support the revolt. The Uprising was aborted for an unknown reason, although as in Peterloo, Magistrates were already on the scene in the town when the Radicals arrived and they dispersed.

The violence and use of Yeomanry continued into 1822 with violent collier strikes in South Wales seeing the Monmouth Troop assisting the Army to use the flat of their swords to disperse the mob. Yeomanry were called out 19 times in 1822. Senior players were now openly repressed by the authorities with little regard for status. In 1820, Francis Burnett was prosecuted, sentenced to prison for three months and fined £1,000 for reporting, despite heavy censure on the Peterloo massacre, writing later;

My opinion of the liberty of the press is that every man ought to be permitted to instruct his fellow subjects; that every man may fearlessly advance any new doctrines, provided he does so with proper respect to the religion and government of the country; that he may point out errors in the measures of public men; but he must not impute criminal conduct to them. The liberty of the press cannot be carried to this extent without violating another equally sacred right; namely, the right of character. This right can only be attacked in a court of justice, where the party attacked has a fair opportunity.

While the post-Napoleonic transition to peacetime economy were not good for the majority of the working class and even the middle class, the upper crust of society had done well from an expansionary monetary policy from the Liverpool Ministry as the economy contracted after the victory. By 1825, the crash that hurt the working class spread to the richest, as speculation brought about by through investments in Latin American countries (some of which didn’t exist, like Gregor McGregor’s Poyals investment for a territory that was not real) caused a speculative bubble that introduced a new, more familiar phenomenon - the stock market crash. Joint-Stock Companies had boomed and the stock market became an ever important component alongside the market for debt. The crash also caused a run on the developing Banking system, taking out nearly 60 County Banks and 6 London Institutions, with the trauma spreading through to business activity - bankruptcies skyrocketed in 1825 and then doubled again in 1826. The crash was blamed in the cities on rural county speculators, further imprinting in the mind of the urban poor and middle class that the rural Tories were the masters of the economic hardship. The major impact on the Radical cause, aside from the fertile political ground, was the impact on the press. The financial pressures made life hard for established papers, and many indeed went bankrupt. This opened the door for a new cohort of more modern, lighter newspapers and pamphlets that were cheaper to print. These brought Radical and Reform press to the fore, and brought the reporting and messages delivered by them.

Despite the economic panic, the small electorate of the unreformed Commons elected once again in 1826, and Liverpool was returned to power and retained his leadership of the Government. Despite this, his time was ending and the race to succeed him began. George Canning, representing greater emphasis on Catholic Emancipation and Free Trade and Earl Eldon, who represented the continuation of the Liverpool ideology of enthusiastic inaction. The two would also need to muscle out the domineering force of the Duke of Wellington, the Napoleonic General who represented a nostalgic vision of Great Britain and Robert Peel, the moderniser who represented the rising ranks of the Tories. When Canning was chosen in 1827, neither Peel nor Wellington served in the cabinet, and Eldon also withdrew. This split the old Tories in Parliament as the supporters of Canning, with the 'Ultras', a term borrowed from the French Chamber of Deputies faction representing the hardline royalist and anti-reformist members in the Commons and Lords, and the Canningites, who supported the new Prime Minister. Canning was forced to look to the Whigs to find members to support his government, and successfully formed a coalition with a faction led by Viscount Goderich. Canning was set apart from the Tories on two issues; Free Trade and Catholic Emancipation. Hopes of reform began to emerge but Canning would not see out the term - he would die in August 1828 as he was already ill when he took the post and would be replaced by Viscount Goderich, who wouldn't be in position for too long, as the Canningites moved back into coalition with the next, and final, Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Duke of Wellington. He was a war hero and a handy operator in the House of Lords, but his intention was to firmly put Reform on the back-burner.

Wellington did concede on one issue, and acted against the Tories central will. The Catholic, Daniel O’Connell would force the promise made to the Irish People in 1801 in exchange for Union: Catholic Emancipation. O’Connell used the socially powerful Catholic Church in Ireland to organise a political movement surrounding his return to his home county to Clare to stand for election. His mass popularity and charm and the influence of the Catholic Association saw him elected, although he could not serve as Catholics were not permitted to sit in Parliament. The Association was people powered; dues were cheap, funded by large meetings, organised through the main meeting point of the poor, catholic class community. With no land, only tenant farming income and a closed community denied change for hundreds of years, O’Connell convinced them, and a generation of talented reformists, that change was possible through the British State. O’Connell won the seat and defeated a cabinet member in the process. Catholic Emancipation was achieved by Oath of Supremacy - O’Connell refused and Peel and Wellington (who was half Irish and had a greater leniency towards the cause) persuaded the fiercely anti-Catholic George IV to pass the Catholic Relief Act with Whigs, while Non-Conformists were granted rights the year before in 1828, Catholics were finally Emancipated in 1829. O’Connell became known as ‘The Emancipator’. His next task and his next campaign, was to restore the Irish Parliament and Repeal the Act of Union to bring representation back to the 85% Catholic Nation.


The lengthening economic concerns, which had now ravaged for nearly a decade, began to seriously wear down the patriotism and loyalty of the crowns subjects within Britain. In the rural areas, William Cobbett toured Southern England, and reported on the disquiet of the labourers and the decline in traditional practices. The rural economy, stable for generations had been under attack from newness, new styles, new machinery and new money flowing from the urban metropolis. With cities attracting the masses from the countryside who were in search of work in the growing number of factories, many who were left behind thought that the technological revolution wouldn't spread to their way of life. The need to modernise saw former labourers who before would 'live-in', or live on the site and work the farm all-year round, having to work on individual jobs as casual labourers with no guarantee of work. With massive over-supply and mechanical improvements, pay declined as food was sent to the cities and hoarded by Landlords. The social gulf between the Farming Gentry and Labouring Classes widened as the employment for less than a year disqualified the workers from poor rates. Systems were designed to address this gap and this was not a new issue - the Speenhamland System of 1795 but the system further depressed wages becoming a safety net in the winter and became part of the economic eco-system in the region. With Poor Laws like these raging out of control, they were cut as deterrent not to avoid work that simply didn't exist. The failure of modernisation, the confusing system of ownership of land, the inability of the surplus population to migrate to the cities, the development of technology which undercut their work and a population increasing created a powder keg which would frame the crisis that began the collapse of the British Monarchy.

In 1830, demands from these workers for change sparked - demanding higher wages across the south and east of England and an end to the threshing machines that destroyed most of their winter employment. In Sussex, Hampshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Devon, Dorset, Huntingdonshire, Gloucestershire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Kent, riots broke out. They had no organised leadership, aside from 'Captain Swing', a fictional character who became a symbol for the movement, similar to 'Blood or Bread' protests earlier in the post-war period. They primarily wanted an end to the process of enclosure, which had cut off their access to common land and forced them to become wage-workers. In the Swing Counties, this process had been accelerated the most and the wage depression was most enhanced on these regions. As a bad harvest began in June and wages were once again depressed, fires on machinery began followed by machine breaking in August, the first of the disturbances. They were disturbed by a further turbulent period in British power, with George IV's death causing a brief search for the successor. They found William IV, deemed more moderate by most of the masses and more tolerant towards reform and the Whigs in Parliament. The change in monarch forced the dissolution of Parliament, and elections were called in the backdrop of constitutional revolts across Europe, in the Austrian Netherlands and France, with the two crowning liberal regimes. Hopes were high and while the Whigs, led by Earl Grey, were more cohesive in their platform and their intent to bring electoral reform.

News of the events were spread by word of mouth and agricultural workers, with their proximity to gentry and local middle and upper classes, the ideas of popular sovereignty would come in the coming months, but the simplistic messages of revolution turning over society were prevalent. The election was fought on the attempts to make the Poor Law harsher, unemployment and the control of the Church of England on the rural areas - it was in essence a rural election set in the frame of parliamentary reform.

Meetings were organised across October as radicals began agitating, with Spencean forces spreading ideas of re-establishing common land ownership amongst the labour workers. In November, spurred on by further revolts in Europe - this time in Poland - the machine breaking began again as winter threshing began, and a combination of all the tactics; fires, tithe riots and machine breaking all occurred alongside more radical harassment of Justices of the Peace. The riots broke up after that, but the local gentry were sympathetic to their ideas and needs to be protected. Despite this, the Committee of Secrecy identified over 500 suspects for transportation and hung the leaders. Radicals like William Cobbett argues the Swing Riots were a down streaming effect of a lack of post war reform. They caused over £150,000 worth of damage and spooked the gentry to the seriousness of the need for reform and arguably swung a proportion of the electorate. The Whigs, led by Earl Grey, won an increased number of seats, without a majority, up against the divided Tories.

There were 1,976 trials in total. Of the men tried, sentencing was as follows:


The Riots showed one thing to the agricultural workers and the gentry alike - the power of the combined agricultural labour force. Without organisation, they managed to cause enough of a bloody nose across the agricultural Swing Counties. The lack of use of the police, organised by the Ultra-Tory Robert Peel in 1829, were used surprisingly infrequently throughout the riots. There were no unions formed in the aftermath, no lasting effects and the rioters demands were once again ignored, and the Swing Riots would act as the final signal to most that change could not occur through the unreformed Commons.

In November, Wellington lost a key vote and William IV requested Grey form a Ministry, the first Whig dominated Ministry since the Ministry of All the Talents. Grey pledged to pass electoral reform and reform the House to allow greater representation and eliminate rotten boroughs. His ‘Reform Act’ was presented to the Commons and failed in its first attempt in March 1831, and Grey asked the King to dissolve Parliament, which he was unwilling to do. He believed that another election would stir agricultural tensions once again which could be combined with urban agitation for insurrection. William was however not as moderate and liberal as his reputation, but he was especially irritated by the conduct of a cockily confident opposition in the Lords to the bill, who announced an intention to vote against dissolution. This was interpreted as an attack on royal prerogative, and the King was prepared to go in person to the House of Lords and prorogue Parliament. When told that his horses would not be ready, he offered to go in a Hackney Cab. The Times described the mood, saying "It is utterly impossible to describe the scene ... The violent tones and gestures of noble Lords ... astonished the spectators, and affected the ladies who were present with visible alarm."


He immediately declared new elections, which the reformers, led by Grey, won. This just created a new division - Commons, in favour of reform, against the Lords who were against it. The Public was captivated by the motions in Parliament; Lord Londonderry brandished a whip in the chamber to thrash Government supporters, brawls broke out and the King burst in and dissolved the Parliament. Excellent drama. The crisis broke down while the King had his coronation in September 1831. It was a low key affair, less than a quarter of the lavish coronation that George had thrown. Traditionalist ultra-Tories threatened to boycott the "Half-crown" coronation.

At the beginning of the reform crisis, the formation of a group in Birmingham would bring a reluctant revolutionary to the fore of the national politic. In 1829, the Birmingham Political Union (BPU) was founded, with it's first meeting taking place on January 25th 1830, attended by between 10,000 and 15,000 people. Stating it's aim as the reform of the House of Commons, it's aim was politically savvy - it aimed to combine the "two industrious classes of the nation.... middle and lower... who have been deceived into attacking and blaming each other for their sufferings." While it was founded with the joint cause of parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Peel Acts, wishing the return the currency from the Gold Standard to a Fiat Currency, the coalition it build between Radical-aligned Artisans, Extreme Radical Working Classes and the Moderate Middle and Industrial Classes, who all wanted representation, was a powerful force.

The Political Union Movement spread and it's organisation was copied across the country. This put Grey in a difficult position as the Reform Acts were drafted - the Political Union Movement were in support of Grey's Government, and used the Daniel O'Connell model of non-violence, large political association and cooperation within the system for public pressure of change. This peace was delicate, however, as the movement would likely disperse with the passage of the acts, the delay of the acts put them at odds with the Commons support they had. The BPU had an advantage with it's leadership, with Thomas Attwood's ability to turn a discredited cause, blighted by Riots and Conspiracies throughout the 1820s, into an articulate and sincere cause led by a respected individual. Their aims, and the aims of the BPU were clear; the right to vote for all men who paid tax, shorter parliaments (falling short of the old radical rallying cry of annual parliaments), and the abolition of property qualifications for MPs and the professionalism of MPs to allow members outside of the rich establishment.

Predictably, as the Bill went back to the Parliament in a revised version, the bill was voted down again in the House of Lords. Demonstrations began around the country across against the King and the Lords, and the demonstrations grew violent. Grey urged the King to create new Lords to ensure the passing of the Bill, but the King was reluctant, having created 22 new peers as part of his Coronation. Grey wished to continue with the passage of the act, and reintroduced it to the Lords and to the surprise of many, the Lords did not reject the bill, but decided to add a number of amendments to the bill to dilute its reformist agenda. Grey met with his cabinet and decided to resign if the King did not agree to the creation of the peers. William was not to be moved, he accepted their resignations. He called the Duke of Wellington to reform a ministry and as he left, on October 8th 1831, he left Parliament around 9:45pm to a hostile crowd of workers, artisans and bourgeois capitalists alike. As he entered his carriage, with mud being slung towards it from the crowd outside the gates, he exited Westminster and began to return back to Bushy Palace in Teddington. Reaching an unlit corner, late at night, he encountered a group of protesters who continued to throw mud at the carriage, but this time, the mud was followed by rocks and finally, a gun shot. The perpetrator was never found, but the King lay dead in his carriage, with the shot piercing his neck and causing him to bleed out. When the King's Guards attempted to round up all the witnesses, more shots were fired towards the Guards: 3 Guards were shot and 13 civilians were killed or injured. It begun.